The Rantings of a Madman
by zTiamaTz
Summary: A simple collection of plot ideas, one-shots, and add-ons to my already existing stories.
1. Intro

**The Rantings of a Madman**

zTiamaTz

WMullen 78 at Yahoo dot com

****  
**Other then the continuing stories I've published, there have been a number of plot ideas, and one-shots in various states of completion. Rather then just letting them rot, I've decided to put them here as I complete them.**

Occasionally, I will post something from an existing story of mine, that just doesn't fit into the main body. The continuity tag at the top of each future story will show what, if any story, you should read first before starting that particular chapter.

Currently I have ten unfinished stories, that I have varying amounts of time for. It simply has to do with when my muse hits me for a particular story. I have no timetable for when the next will be published.

One thing I can assure you is that very few, if any, of these stories will be continued at any time in the future. Most are simply fleshed out plot ideas that I don't have time to make into multi-chapter stories.

I would also like to thank my beta, Theo, for his hard work. He's been amazingly helpful with my ideas and stories, and my writing has definitely improved because of him. Theo has written many great stories of his own, and I highly recommend them. Unless otherwise noted, he'll be the beta on any story published here.

Finally, I would like to thank the readers. I've only been writing for eight months now, yet I've had an unbelievable amount of support. The emails and reviews I've received have been overwhelmingly positive. That is something any writer can appreciate.

****


	2. Secret Identity

**Title: Secret Identity**

Author: zTiamaTz

Email: WMullen78 at Yahoo dot com

Beta by: Starway Man

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel the Series, along with the characters from their respective shows, are owned by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.

Disclaimer 2: The movie 'The Expendables', is owned by Nu Image and Millennium Films.

Summary: A descended Cordelia has lost her man, and someone comes along to straighten her butt out.

Continuity: None

A/N: This story will be entirely from Cordelia's POV.

**==0==**

As I parked in front of the place called "Tool's Tattoos", all I could hope for was that I could make things right - somehow.

I'm Cordelia Chase, and I was once the Queen C of southern California. That life is way in the past now though, of course, as is my relationship with my former boss, Angel; as soon as I saw that dumb-ass vampire having sex with that werewolf girl Nina less than two months after our farewell kiss from my position in the higher realms, I'd drawn the curtain over that part of my life. And after descending, I guess you could call it, I'd eventually found a new guy called Lee Christmas.

Lee had left a jacket at my house two months ago, and I'd found a business card for this place in the inner pocket. I thought _maybe_ I'd be able to get a message to him.

It's funny; for the first time ever since I came back to Earth, I had actually been happy. After being screwed over by the Powers with the whole Jasmine thing, someone a lot higher up than them had decided that I deserved a second chance at life.

Problem was, it was almost like witness protection; no connection to what I'd had before. Not that any of my LA family was still alive after the idiotic mass suicide Angel had decided to perpetrate, back in 2004.

Anyway, I was living in New Orleans and going by the name "Lacy Johnson". It may have sounded a little too much like a stripper's name, but for some reason, I liked it. I'd been getting back into the whole swing of things concerning being mortal once more, when I'd screwed up with Lee - big time.

I had gotten into this whole mess when I'd gone on a date with another guy, thinking Lee wasn't coming back. Hey, the guy didn't tell me where he was or what he did for a living, what was I supposed to conclude? When he'd found out, Lee hadn't taken it well, and my entire world came crashing down around me.

Later, after that asshole I'd dated had beaten me up - God, I missed the whole demon powers thing, and while I haven't forgotten the moves Angel taught me my new body's muscle memory sucks! - Lee had returned the favor, kicking the shit out of that lowlife and all of his friends. But after that, Lee had made it clear that we were through. Done. Finished.

Now, here I was hoping that I could somehow make it up to him.

I headed toward the entrance, and hoped I wouldn't need to get a tattoo out of this, or something equally stupid. _God_, the things I did to snag a decent guy...

**==0==**

"I'm sorry, darlin'; they were the only guys that would take the job, there is no one else to help 'em," the man named 'Tool' explained sadly.

The man was big, with long greasy hair. Even though he looked like the stereotype of a bad-ass biker, he'd been surprisingly nice to me about this whole thing. What he'd told me, though, ranked right up there with finding out that vampires and demons were real.

I was still trying to process what I'd heard. Mister prospective husband-material was a mercenary, being held prisoner on some God-forsaken island after a coup d'état gone wrong?

I was suddenly reminded of a long-ago conversation I'd had with Buffy Summers, outside the Bronze; back when we were teenagers in high school. I'd just gotten out of hospital after catching my boyfriend cheating on me and getting a rebar through my stomach, and I'd asked her: Why me? Why do I get impaled? Why do I get bitten by snakes? Why do I fall for incredible losers?

In a nutshell, why does stuff like this always happen to me, no matter which life I'm living?

Apparently, Lee had thought enough of me before what had happened, to tell Tool what a great lady he thought I was. That was the _only_ reason why he'd divulged what had actually happened to Lee, and the rest of his team.

With a sigh, I'd got up from the stool I'd parked my ass on, and thanked Tool for his trust. I was almost out the door when he spoke again.

"If I hear anything, one way or the other, I've got your number - so I'll let you know."

I gave him a nod, and headed out the door. A mercenary. That's who I'd been dating; someone who risked his life on a daily basis for money. Maybe even killed people for it as well.

This was my life? Unbelievable. I was going home to get drunk.

**==0==**

I sat on the couch alone, bottle in hand. Things had started to get hazy a few minutes ago, but that didn't stop me from finishing off the glass. I was only used to the occasional glass of Cabernet, but Lee liked Jack, and Mister Daniels had looked mighty fine when I got home from Tool's.

"_Are you serious?_" A somehow-familiar female voice asked out of nowhere.

Unfortunately, I'd been pouring myself another drink at that moment. I dropped the bottle, which knocked over the glass, which spilled across the table, and all over my pristine, white carpet. Oh, someone was going to _die_ for this!

Looking up from my carpet, I saw a woman sitting in the easy chair across the living room. She was wearing a white gown, but I couldn't make out her face. At first, I assumed it was because I was drunk, but then...

Suddenly, I realized that the gown looked _very_ familiar, a lot like the one I'd worn several years ago. That's all it took - I grabbed the now empty bottle by the neck, and stood up. "What the hell do you want?"

I'd heard of her kind when I was Up There, they were sort of like guardian angels. To keep the stupid 'balance' they had to remain anonymous, though, hence the blurry features.

The woman simply snorted at me, not impressed at all by my attempt at a threatening voice.

"_It's just that I never took Cordelia Chase for a lush._" the woman then said, casually crossing one leg over the other.

Uh-oh, nobody up there was supposed to know I was here - except _him_. "Screw you, no-face, my name is Lacy Johnson-"

"_Sure it is. And you've done such a great job with the whole new identity thing, haven't you? Nice house, high-end car, decent job...and yet here you are on a Tuesday night, drinking yourself into a stupor._"

She acted like the high and mighty "queen of cool" I'd once been, which just pissed me off even more.

Normally, I would have been more rational about the whole thing, but I was totally buzzed thanks to the liquor and I had most likely lost my boyfriend permanently. So, I did the first thing that came to mind; I threw the damn bottle at her stupid head.

The woman snatched it out of the air with absolute ease. She gave the label a quick once-over, and tsk'ed. Then she placed the bottle down on the floor beside her, and brought her attention back to me.

Lady No-name then said, "_Is that the best you can do? If only Harmony and your Cordettes could see you now. Even the Cordelia Chase that went to Hollywood to become a movie star wouldn't drink this stuff on general principles. She'd have said that this is what Xander Harris, and his loser family would eventually end up pickling their livers with._"

Fear started crawling up my spine - I had given up my only weapon, and I just _knew_ this woman had her own agenda. I simply wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing yet. "Why are you here?"

"_And to top this whole mess off,_" The woman in white said, ignoring my question. "_You sleep around on the guy you supposedly love. Hypocrite much? At least Harris had the excuse of being a horny teenager, back in high school._"

That was it - nobody talked to me that way. I stepped around the coffee table and charged the woman. I was _so_ going to beat her ass for the last wisecrack, as it brought back memories of a time I'd much prefer to forget.

She grabbed my right wrist as I threw a sloppy punch at her, and then wrapped her other hand around my neck. Before I could fight back, there was a bright white flash, and suddenly, I was falling flat on my ass.

**==0==**

I looked up to see the woman standing over me, but she made no further move to attack. Then I realized I was actually thinking clearly, I could move my arms and legs again without that floaty feeling.

"_And here I thought you got over the spoiled princess act years ago. No wonder you can never keep a guy._" She said evenly, as I got to my feet.

That just made me angry all over again. "Rude much? You're the one that came into _my_ house without an invite, remember?"

"_Which only goes to prove that I'm not a vampire. Tell me, what would you be doing right now if I hadn't shown up? Finding some other loser to bone, after getting completely plastered?_"

This was getting us nowhere, so I decided to simply swallow what little pride I had left. "Fine. I get it, my bad," I told her with a sigh. "Now what do you want?"

"_Finally,_" My unwelcome house-guest said with exasperation. "_Now I'm going to have to make this quick, since I have a white-lighter to meet up with soon. Kinda funny how we didn't get that tag, huh?_

I just stared at her, she had the nerve of accusing me of acting like a drunk? What the hell was her excuse? "What. Do. You. Want?"

"_There are people from your former life in Sunnydale you can call to help you straighten your new life out - that is, if you're willing to take the risk on them finding out just how you managed to come back from Up There._"

"But-"

"_Or, you can start your new collection of pussy cats instead; I'm sure you haven't forgotten what your Aunt Helen's house was like when you were a kid. I saw a great stray tabby a couple of blocks over_-"

"I wouldn't know where to start," I cut that train of thought right off. "I haven't been in contact with any of them for six years!"

She put her hand up to her 'face' with a sigh. "_There are a 'lot' of Slayers in this world nowadays, which I'm sure you haven't forgotten. And this city is full of cemeteries, so how hard could it be if you actually got off your formerly drunken ass and tried to look up an ex-boyfriend? One who, by the way, was the only member of the Sunnydale crowd to ever visit your gravestone in LA._" Then, she turned around and walked away.

"Hey, where are you going?" I called out, as she opened the front door. She may have been an unwelcome nag, but sue me if I didn't want to be alone right now.

"_Have you ever had your brand new hairdo chopped to pieces by a ceiling fan?_" The woman asked dismissively.

"No."

"_Let's just say, I prefer open sky._" With that said, she closed the door behind her.

I ran to the front door, opening it up straightaway. Looking outside, all I could see was Old Man Tyson walking that little leg-humper dog of his.

Of course, I should have known she'd pull something like that; it's what her kind did, after all.

I slammed the door shut and growled at the ceiling. Stupid higher beings.

Still, at least now I had something better to do than just sit on the couch and drink myself into a coma on a Tuesday night...

**==0==**

**END**


	3. Last Chance

**Title: Last Chance**

**Author: zTiamaTz**

**Email:**

**Beta By: Starway Man**

**Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel the Series, along with the characters from their respective shows, are owned by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.**

**Description: Before going to deal with Professor Lester Wirth, Faith gets an unexpected visitor at her apartment.**

**Continuity: This is a small piece of the story 'Let's Make A Deal'.**

**A/N: This story will be entirely from Faith's POV.**

**A/N 2: This takes place after Faith starts working for the Mayor, so expect some canonical bashing of various Scooby Gang members.**

**}¤0¤{**

**THE TRAP**

**}¤0¤{**

I finished tying up my Doc Martens, and went over to the dresser to grab the knife which the boss had given me. The thing was just nasty looking, but totally wicked cool, and simply begging to be used.

Tonight, like it or not, it was gonna get used.

The Mayor wanted some egghead off'ed for finding out something he wasn't supposed to. Worst I ever had to do for a sugar daddy before was turn a trick, but now I had to murder some dude.

I couldn't bitch about it, though, it's not like I expected any different after I signed up with the bad guy, right? I figure get it done quick and clean, painless as possible. Guy hadn't done anything worth making him suffer, anyways.

As I stuck the knife into my jacket pocket, someone started banging at the door. Probably another one of them goddamn vamps the boss has on retainer. I swear, they'd been a pain in my ass since I took this job.

The number one vamp after Trick got dusted showed up that very same night, thinking he was gonna get a piece. Shit-for-brains soon learned otherwise, on account of I rammed a stake up his ass before sticking it into his heart.

Bottom line, ever since I became a Slayer? I was no one's fuck toy.

I ended up making a big show of having another one of those leeches come in to sweep his dust up. They all had invites, since they were the ones that had moved all the boss's shit in.

Problem was, vamps just ain't that bright. Not even three days later, I found another one in my place, sniffing my panties from the laundry hamper. Fucking perv. I left that one alive, letting him explain to his buddies what a ruptured nut sack felt like.

"I'm coming!" I screamed, even as the pounding continued. Obviously someone hadn't got the fucking memo. They sure were now though.

That shit still gave me giggles. You _never_ heard a vamp howl, till you crushed his balls between the heel of your boot and the floor. Before tonight, I thought that had made the message pretty goddamn clear.

Hell, I'd even told the Mayor to do that spell to keep his fuckin' vamps out outta my crib. Last thing I needed was B's undead boy toy walking in here, and trying ta hump _me_ too.

Finally at the door, I started undoing the locks. Even still, the bastard kept right on banging. If this wasn't the boss himself, whoever was on the other side of this door was gonna eat my size nine.

I threw open the door, to see someone in a biker jacket. I couldn't see the face 'cause the guy was holding a camera up. "What the fuck do you want?"

Instead of replying, the camera gave off a super-bright flash right in my face, causing me to take a step back.

"You forgot to say cheese, Slayer!" the man exclaimed, before the sound of footsteps took off down the hallway toward the stairs.

I blinked the flash outta my eyes. I didn't know who this guy was, but when I got my hands on him, I was gonna shove that camera so far up his ass, he'd be spittin' film.

**}¤0¤{**

I burst through the door and went down a level; I could see him going down the next, probably trying to get out of the building. That was the _smartest_ and _last_ thing he'd ever do.

The screech of the street exit door opening, it told me what was the what. I had told the Mayor he needed to get one of his vamps to grease it, but now I was glad it hadn't happened.

Shortly after, I threw the door open and found the bastard was still pointing that camera at me too.

"How about a pretty smile this time, huh?"

This guy had guts, I'd give him that much. Rushing forward, I caught him by surprise. Slapping the camera from his hands, I grabbed him by the front of his shirt, and slammed him against the alley wall.

I stared him in those red eyes of his. He was pale as shit too, with long, greasy black hair. Looked like a reject from one of those dumb-ass Goth clubs.

"I'd let go if I were you," the man warned in a gravelly voice, without a care in the world.

Ignoring him, I started to wrap my other hand around his neck, when there was suddenly an arm around my throat. Then a hand of the back of my head.

"Don't move. If you do, I'll snap your neck in an instant," a man's voice growled in my ear. "Now let him go. Carefully."

Mama Lehane didn't raise no dummy. I let go of the guy's shirt and throat, and was instantly pulled back, before being thrown face-first into a nearby wall. Before I could shake it off, the man was there again, keeping me in place.

"Faith Marie Lehane, born December fourteenth, nineteen eighty in Boston, Massachusetts. Mother, Katherine Jane Lehane, nee Miller, deceased. Father, George Patrick Lehane, serving a life sentence at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center for first degree murder."

"Is there a point ta all this?" I was hoping these guys weren't Council. They didn't sound like limeys, but who knew how the Watchers really worked? Diana, my first Watcher, she'd been pretty tight-lipped on how her bosses operated. I wouldn't put it past ol' Wussley to sic these pricks onto me.

"Watcher, Professor Diana Dormer, deceased," the man continued, ignoring my question. "Watcher, Gwendolyn Post, deceased. Hmm...Watcher Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, _alive_."

They weren't Council, otherwise they wouldn't have included Post. So who the fuck were they?

"It seems to us, Miss Lehane, that people have a nasty habit of dying around you. Does that sound about right?"

Like any of that shit was my fault; even with Diana, there was nothing I could have done for her. "Ya know what, fuck you guys."

"Really?" the bigger man asked, as pressing my face harder against the wall. "After you're dead, we might just give that a try."

"We really don't like your attitude, Miss Lehane, and if you think that your boss' minions are going to come save you, forget it. It's just _you_ and _us_."

I hated to admit it, but these guys scared the hell out of me. They talked about screwing my corpse like it was nothing to them. "Who are you?"

The camera man snorted. "My name is Mister Port, and my associate with the grip on your neck is Mister Storm. We're here for information. Now you can either cooperate, or you can die."

"It's up to you, Faith-y, one way or the other," a familiar voice added, as he walked out of the darkness in the alley toward us.

I stared in shock, what the _fuck_ was going on here? "Harris?"

**}¤0¤{**

I shuddered, these two fucking psychos and now him? A click-clack that sounded like a pistol round being chambered echoed in the alley. A few seconds later, I knew for sure it was, since the gun was pressed to my left temple.

Fuck it, this was bad. I so much as twitched, it was either a case of broken neck or a metal slug deep inside my brain. Either way, Slayer healing wouldn't help.

"See, Faith, I know I screwed up by having sex with you the night the world almost ended. But when I came to your room a few weeks later, it wasn't for a second taste. I was trying to help you."

"What, Boy Toy, ya gonna fix the problem by shooting me now?" Fuck it, he had a gun to my head anyways.

"Come on. If I wanted you dead, these fine gentlemen from the _Order of Taraka_ would have done the job already, and been halfway outta town by now," Xander answered.

Oh shit, how the hell did he get them here? Diana had told me all about these guys back in Boston, they were _bad_ fucking news.

"Now, I've cut a deal that could work out for you and everybody else. Well, except Hizzoner the Mayor of course..."

He gave me that stupid grin of his, and fuck me, but I just wanted to punch his lights out so bad I could fuckin' taste it. "What kinda deal are you talking 'bout?"

"I have in my possession three rings from former members of the Order who came here to kill Buffy last year," Harris explained evenly. "Rather than fighting the Slayer, or her pet vamp, I offered to retrieve them - for a price."

"What?" I screamed; spit flying from my mouth as soon as I figured it out. "You decided to give 'em a replacement Slayer to take it all out on, you fuckin' asshole?"

"It's _circumstance_, Miss Lehane," the Port guy told me. "Mr. Harris presented us with certain information, and the Order has no wish to see an Old One walk the earth once more; it would put us out of business."

"So tell me, Harris, what keeps 'em from offing you once they got their precious rings?" If I could get them to fight with each other, I might have a chance here.

Instead, Xander snorted. "Come on Faith, give me _some_ credit," he replied, mock-insulted. "I made a blood pact with these guys, before I spilled what I knew; and as long as I don't go against the Order's interests here and now, we part ways peacefully."

"_That_ caveat, however," Storm, growled in my ear, "does not have to include _you_."

**}¤0¤{**

I sighed, knowing I wasn't gonna be able to bullshit my way outta this. "Whaddya wanna know?"

"We've had your building under surveillance for the past two days," Camera Guy explained. "We know you're planning to silence someone for Wilkins tonight. Tell us who."

I hesitated; Wilkins had done right by me so far. Nice apartment, new clothes, a freaking Playstation...he seemed to really care about me, could I really screw him over like this?

"What's it going to be, Miss Lehane, answers?" The big guy asked, as he breathed into my ear. "Or should we determine how much fun we are going to have with _your corpse_?"

I glanced over to Harris, who'd heard the whole thing. He just stood there stone-faced with the pistol in his right hand, pointed at the ground. His left hand was at his side, with a bandage wrapped around it. He didn't seem to give a shit what happened to me, one way or another.

"Don't look at me, Faith," Xander growled. "I saved your ass once, and look what I got for it in return."

Storm's grip on my neck tightened - painfully. "It seems you are an expert at burning bridges, Miss Lehane. What difference does it make at this stage, if you burn one more?"

I knew right then the game was over, the only chance I had was ta give 'em what they wanted, and hope they gave me a head-start.

"There's this old guy at UC Sunnydale, named Professor Lester Wirth. The boss wanted me to kill him, and destroy whatever papers and shit he had at his apartment. Don't ask me why, I never bothered to find out..."

"What else? Tell us what you know about the Ascension," Xander demanded. "I know Buffy and Deadboy thought you spilled your guts completely when you thought Angelus was loose, but then we both know how you aren't _that_ dumb, Faith."

I spilled my guts about everything I knew concerning Wilkins' operation. No matter how little or stupid it was. That fucking gun barrel resting against my head didn't exactly give me a choice in the matter.

Twenty minutes later, we were done. I knew that, 'cause the big guy slammed my head against the wall and let me drop to the ground.

As blood poured down the left side of my face, I heard the three of them talking. Looking over to them, I saw Harris hand a small, black bag to the big one.

I tried to move or at least do something, but it felt like I was drunk or stoned or some shit like that.

"We're going to secure Professor Wirth, and find out what he knows," Mister Port said. "If we can stop Wilkins before he turns into whatever pure demon form he has in mind, we will do so."

"Understood," Xander nodded. "What are you going to do with her?" He gestured to me with his gun.

"Nothing. She cooperated with our interrogation, and since there is no contract for her termination and she does not owe us any money, it is not our place to kill her. As far as the Order is concerned, Mister Harris, what happens to Miss Lehane now is for you to decide," Mister Storm said.

With that, the two of them walked away, leaving me alone with a very _different_ Xander Harris than I'd ever thought possible...

**}¤0¤{**

My old boy toy crouched down a few feet from me, making sure to keep his distance. That close, I could see healing bruises on his face, and what looked to be a busted lip. Damn, someone had worked him over real good.

"Believe it or not, Faith, before your little journey into the Dark Side of the Force, I liked you a lot. And it wasn't on account of how appealing your tits were, or how nice your ass looked in leather either."

He was fucking with me now. I didn't know what his game was, but I wasn't interested in playing anymore. I'd sold out the boss, and everyone in B's fan club was out for my blood. I couldn't move, on account of some weird shit that had been done to me – probably that Cruciamentum drug, or something like it. I was screwed, and we both knew it.

"Just fucking get it over with, Harris."

"Alright," Xander said simply, taking a few steps closer, but still keeping out of reach. I looked up at him, with my blood-stained face. He had the gun leveled at my head. "Say goodbye, Faith."

There was nothing else to say, this was it. "Goodbye," I whispered, before squeezing my eyes shut.

- _Click_ -

The next few seconds was dead quiet, and I finally managed to open my eyes again. The fucking asshole was just standing there, putting one of those magazine things into the gun!

"Faith, I have only two things to say. One, the drugs will wear off in less than two minutes. Two, you're dead if you stay here in Sunnydale any longer. You know it, I know it, and if that vamp on the roof watching us right now works for Wilkins like I think he does, the Mayor will soon know it too. So get the fuck out of town. I _never_ want to see you again."

The goddamn bastard then just walked away, tucking the gun into his jacket. Finally getting to my feet, I headed for the front door of the building - on account of I had a lot of packing to do in a big hurry...

Fuck it. Easy come, easy go. Although I was really gonna miss that Playstation.

**}¤0¤{**

**A/N 3: Please see my story 'Let's Make A Deal', to see how Xander got involved with the Tarakans.**

**}¤0¤{**

**THE END**


	4. A Hundred Will Do

**Title: A Hundred Will Do**

Author: zTiamaTz

Email:

Beta By: Starway Man

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, along with the other characters from the show, are owned by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.

Description: After Faith is assassinated by Travers and the Council, Xander is offered the opportunity to even things up.

Continuity: None

A/N: This story will be entirely from Xander's POV.

A/N 2: This story takes place some time during season 4 of Buffy, after "The Freshman" but before "Something Blue".

:-0-: - Denotes the beginning/end of a flashback.

**==0==**

"You have to come out sometime, Travers," I whispered to the man I wanted dead as he sat, safe and protected, within the Council's London headquarters. He couldn't hear me, of course, but that was okay.

Faith never saw coming whoever it was that'd killed her, either. Comas were a real bitch like that.

According to the man that had set me down this path, a girl named Violet Anderson - from Bayonne, New Jersey - was the new Slayer. Most likely, the Watchers had tracked Vi down by now - like Faith and even Buffy, she was someone they'd missed grabbing as a little kid, and so the Council types were no doubt busy trying to turn her into an emotionless robot, just like Kendra had been.

And that was part of why I was in this London park, straddling Great Russell Street, andtaking cover under a tree as the rain poured down. According to my supplier, I had one hundred untraceable bullets, and what's more, any kind of investigation regarding their use would be instantly squashed, no matter where in the world I used them.

Good thing, too, on account of I planned on using them here in London as soon as possible.

**:-0-:**

_I sat on a stone bench, near Faith's grave. I'd only been back in Sunnydale a few hours, and hadn't even seen Buffy or Willow yet. After getting the wonderful news that I'd have to 'rent' my parents' basement, I'd been eager to see some people I actually liked._

I'd stopped by Giles' place to catch up on things, and that's when I'd gotten the news. Someone had gone into Faith's hospital room one night a few weeks ago, and suffocated her with a pillow. She hadn't even woken up from her coma to fight back.

Bottom line, there was a new Slayer out there somewhere, and no one apart from a couple of gravediggers had attended Faith's funeral.

I sat there, wondering...what could I have done different? Despite how evil she'd become, despite the fact she'd tried to choke me to death, despite how she'd tried to strip away Deadboy's soul and she'd even held a knife to Willow's throat, Faith had been my first.

Call me naïve, but it wasn't just a meaningless lay for me, even if that was all it had been for her.

I couldn't help wondering - if I had kept it in my pants, would she have listened to me after she'd killed Finch? If I hadn't treated her just like every other guy she'd met in her life, could Faith have brought herself to trust me?

Probably not, if the way she was so loyal to the Mayor afterwords was any indication, but a guy can dream.

I heard a branch snap somewhere behind me. Just perfect. "You picked the wrong guy to snack on tonight, leech, so walk away before you get dusted," I threatened, as I carefully palmed a stake from my inner-jacket pocket.

"I'm glad to see you haven't lost your balls over the last two or three months, Mister Harris. I wouldn't want to think I'd come all the way out here for nothing," a gravelly voice replied.

I turned as I got to my feet, stake at the ready. A few feet away was an old man, he was probably in his sixties - older than Giles or my dad, anyway. He wore a business suit and trench coat, and the only thing resembling a weapon was the steel briefcase in his right hand.

"And since surviving in this town often necessitates jumping to conclusions..." He dipped his left hand into his coat pocket.

I tensed, not sure what to expect. If the guy pulled out a gun, I was screwed.

Instead, he pulled out a small gold cross. "As you can see, I'm not a 'leech' as you so charmingly put it," he told me, before stuffing the cross back in his pocket.

That didn't make me feel any better. He obviously knew about the Sunnydale nightlife, and worse, he knew me. "So what do you want?"

"What I want isn't strictly relevant, Mister Harris." He nodded toward Faith's grave. "It's more about what you want."

I got a sick feeling, hearing that. It had been months since I saw her running away from Sunnydale, but you don't easily forget a girl like Anya - who'd made no secret of the fact that I was scum like the rest of my gender. Yet for some reason, was an acceptable date for Senior Prom as well. "You aren't some kind of wish demon, are you?"

"Let's just say I won't be putting on a pretty dress, just so you can take me to your high school prom." There was literally no humor in his tone.

Okay, so he knew a lot about me. This could get pretty bad, considering I was the one who'd set up that bomb for Graduation. If he knew about the little stuff, I was afraid of what else he knew.

He must have sensed my unease. He stepped forward, and carefully placed the case onto the bench I'd been sitting on. At the same time, I took two steps back.

"My name is Agent Graves, and I'm here to make you an offer that you can either accept or decline - the choice is yours, free of reward or reprisal," the man said evenly.

"And what exactly is your offer?"

"We both know that Quinton Travers was the man who ordered the killing of Faith Lehane a few weeks ago. I'm giving you the opportunity to amend the mistake he made."

Who was this guy, a renegade Watcher? I couldn't hear any accent in his voice, like with Giles and Weasley Wesley. "And how exactly am I supposed to do that, huh?"

He gestured toward the steel briefcase. "Inside this attaché case is irrefutable evidence that what I'm telling you is true. Also present within is a gun, and one hundred rounds of ammunition. All untraceable. All yours. Do with it as you see fit." [See A/N 3]__

"Wait, wait, wait," I said, not believing what I'd just heard. "You're seriously telling me that you're offering a hundred bullets to kill Travers, and they're untraceable?"

"That I did."

"Great, they're untraceable, but that doesn't mean crap if someone sees me do it. Or are there so many bullets you're offering me in that briefcase, on account of I'm gonna have to kill any witnesses too?" I accused.

"Witnesses are not an issue. Suffice it to say there will be no investigation for any killing involving these bullets. None whatsoever. Both now, and any time in the future. You have my word on it."

Right, like I was just going to take his word for something like that. Still, there was one question I was interested in asking. "Why me?" I had to say it, I had to know why this man came to me of all people with an offer like this.

"Because here you are, sitting in a vampire-infested cemetery, mourning a dead girl that tried to strangle you to death," Graves said in that even tone of voice. "Who better than you to avenge her murder?"

Well, with that kind of logic, how could I say no to this guy's offer of a gun with 100 bullets?

**:-0-:**

Finally, Travers' Rolls Royce pulled out through the gates of the Council headquarters. I'd been watching the place for a couple of days, so that I'd know exactly when to strike. Seeing that pompous bastard in that car pissed me off no end, though.

Faith had lived in that fleabag motel, while he was getting driven around in a chauffeured car worth a couple hundred _grand_ at least. Him and his organization had been that stingy with a girl who'd needed a decent home, instead of living somewhere where hookers turned tricks? The more I saw of him, the more I couldn't wait to finish the job.

Leaving my cover, I made my way to the rental car a few minutes later. No more waiting; tonight was going to be the night.

**==0==**

With a little bit of speeding - how the hell did the Brits do it driving on the wrong side of the road, and with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car? - I managed to catch up with them, but they were still two cars ahead of me. Timing was going to be a bitch, as I needed to be behind the Rolls Royce in order to make this work.

Just as we were about to leave the zone I'd designated to make this happen, luck was _finally_ on my side. I was directly behind the Rolls, and the car had gotten caught by a red light. Knowing this was probably the best opportunity I would get, I made my move.

I came up on the Rolls and stopped just a _little_ too late, giving the very expensive car a hard bump on its fender. It didn't take long for Travers' hefty driver to get out, and boy was he _pissed_. Perfect.

Grabbing a map of London from the passenger seat, I used it to cover the gun up as I got out of the car. "I am _so_ sorry!" I was going for an air-headed tourist vibe, and judging by the look on his face, it was working.

"You stupid effing Yank!" the Council chauffeur screamed as he stalked toward me. "Do you have any idea how much this car is worth, you bloody git?"

"I-I was trying to read my map, plus _hey_, you people drive on the wrong-" Before I could finish, he was right in my face. That was all I needed to pull the gun from under the map and pistol-whip him.

The driver dropped like a stone; no matter how big a guy is, you catch them in the temple like that, and they'll go down like a big sack of potatoes. Since he was just a driver, I didn't want to kill him; the odds were that he personally hadn't had anything to do with Faith's death.

I ignored the nearby witnesses; even at this time of night, people seemed to just love strolling around on the streets here. Guess that seems weird to me because, _hello_, product of a Sunnydale education here. Plus, with all those cameras that were installed all over the city, I knew the cops would be here soon enough.

Putting all of that aside, I turned my attention to the Rolls Royce, as its sole occupant the whole reason I was here. Tonight was gonna be Travers' last night on earth, and I wanted to make sure it was memorable.

**==0==**

I got in the driver's seat, and immediately locked all the doors; I wasn't going to chase him down the damn street like a runaway dog.

"Did you take care of-" Travers stopped when I looked back, and he realized I wasn't his hired gorilla. He hit a button, and the glass partition between the front and back of the car started to rise up, but I simply smashed it with the pistol.

Seeing the gun, he froze for a second before making a mad attempt to open the door.

"Ah-ah-ah," I warned, pointing the gun at his head. "Don't move."

"Who are you, a-a-and w-what do you want?" Travers stuttered.

"Be a man for once in your life, Quinton. You don't want to go out like the Countess of Salisbury, now, do you?" I asked him with a smirk [see A/N 4]. Since Travers had spent all day in the Watchers compound, I'd done some sight-seeing; including the Tower of London.

"Whatever they're paying-"

"This is in no way about money," I growled at him. "My name is Alexander Harris."

Travers musta known who I was, as the look on his face said it all - he knew he wasn't going to get out of this by talking, or offering bribes.

Police sirens cut through the air, they were still in the distance though. I could see hope coming into his eyes, so I decided to crush it immediately.

"They're not going to get here in time." I pulled back the hammer. "This is for Faith, and Buffy, and every other girl who didn't fit into that mold of yours. Of what you and yours thought a _proper_ Slayer _should_ be."

"No, please-"

I put one round into his chest, and then another slug in his forehead. I was ready to leave the car, when I thought better of it. I emptied the entire damn clip into his throat, almost decapitating him.

Better safe than sorry. Who knew what kind of spells the Watchers had in that headquarters of theirs?

Finally exiting the Rolls, I had just enough time to stand upright, before I was surrounded by three police cars. I dropped the gun, and put my hands up. Even if Graves had been lying to me, this was _still_ worth it.

**==0==**

Less than a week later I was a free man, walking through the streets of New York City. It was all as Agent Graves had promised; the evidence had disappeared, the witnesses suddenly got amnesia, the police investigation had been abruptly terminated - oh, I'm sure the Watchers were still howling with rage over that one - and I'd caught the first red-eye back to the States.

I wasn't sure what the deal with that attaché case was, but when all the different airport people scanned it, they never had a problem with its contents. Graves had thought of _everything_, apparently.

Right now, though, I was looking for a gun store. While the gun Graves had given me was taken away, luckily I'd stashed the briefcase in a storage locker at Heathrow Airport. The Council was almost certainly on my tail, and I needed to re-arm myself.

The gun didn't matter, though, only the bullets. If I could take out the number two man of the Council with no repercussions using them, I decided - why not put the rest of the bullets to good use?

Never mind the Council's wet works teams coming from merrie olde England, there were plenty of scumbags here in New York, and I still had eighty-four bullets to use up...

**==0==**

Disclaimer 2: Agent Graves and the comic '100 Bullets' was created by writer Brian Azzarello and artist Eduardo Risso. It is owned by Azzarello, Risso, Vertigo, and DC Comics.

**==0==**

A/N 3: This is a quote taken directly from the comic.

A/N 4: Margaret Pole, the Countess of Salisbury, was executed at the Tower of London in 1541, for treason. She refused to lay her head on the chopping block, and instead, ran. She was chased down, and struck eleven times by her executioner before finally succumbing to her wounds.

**==0==**

**THE END**


	5. Going West

**Title: Going West**

**Author: zTiamaTz**

**Email: WMullen78 at Yahoo . com**

**Beta By: Starway Man**

**Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel the Series, along with the characters from their respective shows, are owned by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.**

**Description: After being dragged into the Hellmouth during the fight with the Master, Xander and Cordelia decide to strike it rich. Things aren't as simple as they hope, though...**

**Continuity: None**

**A/N: This will be entirely from Cordelia's POV.**

**==0==**

I groaned, loudly, as my head whacked the side of the carriage once again, thanks to that incredibly bumpy road. There was a good side and bad side to go with that, though. On the bright side, it wasn't as crowded inside the damn carriage now as it had been during the journey. Unfortunately, when Xander had gone up top to ride shotgun with the driver, he'd left me alone with a bunch of strangers.

The whores were pleasant enough company for being, well...whores. Seriously, it still surprised me how much more civil people were in this day and age, regardless of their position in life. That would have been tolerable, if it weren't for the two men who I was stuck sitting next to.

Prospectors came in all kinds; on the ride from Philadelphia to Cleveland, Xander and I had met a true gentleman. Even though his appearance was pretty unkempt, he was well-spoken, and we were able to pass away the hours with some decent conversation. Well, when I say decent I mean for the current situation; the guy wasn't interested in discussing the latest fashions from Paris, for example.

These two characters, however, were just plain _disgusting_. One held a spittoon between his feet, and both took turns using it quite frequently. They and Xander had almost gotten into fisticuffs when one of them had suggested using it as a piss-pot, rather than simply stopping the carriage to relieve themselves outside.

Not that I had much right to throw stones, because let's face it; I was wearing a stolen dress, and pretending to be from old money. Still, I saw no reason to lower myself to their level, something the whores thoroughly agreed with.

It was funny how the term 'whore' was actually an occupation here, rather than a slur. A lot of women had nothing else except their bodies to make a living with, this far out from what was currently American civilization. Still, they had their pride, something I'd been severely lacking since the day Xander and I had been dropped into this time...

**==0==**

**::Over Two Years Ago::**

After being dragged into the Hellmouth by that...that _thing_ during the night of the Spring Fling dance, Xander and I had quickly discovered that somehow we'd ended up in New York City, circa 1864. That was learned through the discarded newspaper that was lying next to me in the filthy alley we'd landed in.

It was just my luck I'd ended up in the freaking 19th century. I'd been really upset by the whole thing, until Xander had pointed out that our final destination could just as easily have been Hell. When put into those terms, my new outlook on things was slightly less jaded.

I didn't know why we'd ended up here, and neither did the dork-head. Sci-Fi geek that he was, Xander had then started babbling about the Temporal Prime Directive and some other crap about not interfering with history.

He quickly shut up after I threatened to kick his ass, though, as well as my pointing out that we were stuck here without any way to get home; and if he wanted to live, he was damn well going to have to interfere with his precious time line or whatever he called it.

After spending several nights sleeping on stoops, we'd come to realize we'd need to get jobs for new clothing, and a place to sleep. That didn't exactly go as planned, in fact - it actually turned into something resembling a nightmare.

Having no usable money and 'strange' clothing hadn't helped, either. The worst part was that because of the way I was dressed, many men honestly thought I was some kind of foreign prostitute. While most went about their business with a simple no, with some, Xander had had to remedy the problem personally.

Yeah, yeah, I know it wasn't exactly PC for 1997, but men didn't take women seriously in 1864 unless they shoved a gun in the guy's face, and I didn't have one.

The last fight Harris got into over some guy trying to grope me ended up with him landing in jail, after he'd broken the man's jaw; just our luck that the pervert was a powerful businessman's son, who'd been out on the prowl for some exotic piece of ass.

I soon found out that Xander was going to be conscripted into the Union army, after the kangaroo court session involving a judge who was literally _drunk_ on the job. The draft riots during the previous year had made pulling that off harder for the authorities, but since he'd been arrested and convicted of a crime, Xander didn't have a choice in the matter.

After learning all of this, I was almost literally scared to death. Because like it or not I needed the big loser with me, and in one piece. In Sunnydale, I always gave the impression of indifference when it came to school and homework, but that was simply because of my standing with the in-crowd. In actuality, I knew quite a bit about history, including lots of stuff about the Civil War.

The number of deaths on both sides was staggering; and even if you were one of the lucky few to survive, it was more than likely you'd return home lacking one or more limbs. And having seen the mangled survivors of the war, with all their hideous injuries on display quite regularly in the week I'd lived on the streets, I knew I had to act quickly.

On account of Xander would only be in the lockup for a short time. The police were waiting for a contingent of soldiers who were garrisoned outside the city to come and pick him, and several others, up.

After carefully noting all I could during the few jail visits I'd been allowed to make, I'd learned quite a bit about how things worked there. The jail-house that Xander was being held at was small, only employing a few police officers.

One such officer would stay there at night, and that was it. There was a war on, after all, and the men had other things to do - things more important than keeping an eye on some guy that was soon gonna end up cannon fodder.

Using my natural acting talents, a panicked banging at the jail-house door and a sob story about a man following me had worked like a charm. Unlike the last days of the 20th century, here if you screamed 'help', people actually listened, and wanted to help you.

When he'd come out, I'd waited until the guard's back was turned before using the wooden chair leg I'd hidden under the ruffles of my third-hand dress. Catching him across the back of the neck, I'd knocked him out with surprising ease.

After stealing the jail cell keys and freeing Xander, the two of us dragged the policeman into the cell. I scrawled a quick apology to the man for all the trouble I'd caused, and then we left.

That very night we stole a horse, which I had to control because Xander had never had the opportunity to even get on one before. He'd had to hold on for dear life as I pushed the horse as hard as I could. We didn't even know where we were going, just that we needed to get the hell out of New York.

We finally decided on Philadelphia, the next largest city on the coast. Integrating ourselves into life in the 19th century wasn't easy, but we were stuck in this time, and so Xander and I ended up just having to make the best of it for the next two years.

**==0==**

After we arrived in Philadelphia Xander got a job doing construction, first of the City Hall building and then other things, and I found work as a seamstress. It wasn't the most exciting job in the world, but considering the first job I'd gotten was scrubbing floors, I couldn't exactly complain.

During that time the Civil War ended, much to our relief. Luckily, there had never been any repercussions from our little jail-break back in New York City. While cameras did exist in this era, no one had yet come up with the idea of taking pictures of prisoners; even the WANTED! posters had hand-drawn pictures on them, and daguerreotypes were simply too fragile to handle except under glass.

Thus, even if the authorities _were_ still looking for us, they had pretty much no chance of finding either Xander or myself. It's weird how much larger the country is, when you're limited to travelling around on a horse or train.

Anyway, Xander and I lived together in a small apartment in a boarding house, posing as a young married couple. I know, _me_ being Mrs. Alexander Harris? If we'd been in Sunnydale, I'd have hanged myself before ever answering to _that_ name.

But hey, in 1864 it was either that or call myself his sister; and no one thought twice about two sixteen year old's being married and living on their own. It's not like we were expected to still be in school, anyway. Besides, we shared the two-bedroom place with another young couple in their twenties, who had a little boy.

They were Russian immigrants, and spoke almost no English. They could tell that Xander and I weren't together in the husband-and-wife sense - you live in the same broom closet with two other people for long enough, you pick up on the couple vibe - but luckily, they never said anything to us or anyone else.

Over time, we managed to teach each other enough of our languages to communicate. Ludvig and Tatiana eventually became our closest friends, and their boy, Dmitri, was like the cutest thing ever.

Our friends were Russian Orthodox Christians, and when they had Dmitri baptized, they asked Xander and I to be his godparents. Weird, as the dweeb and I were both only seventeen at the time, so it was amazing to think they had that kind of trust in us. If Harmony had been there, I'm pretty sure she would have fainted from the shock. But say la vee.

**==0==**

The strangest part of the whole thing was Xander and I actually becoming man and wife, for real. No, I'm not kidding; after I turned eighteen, I decided to marry the big jerk, and we made it official with the same priest who'd baptized Dmitri - on account of we knew he could be trusted to keep his mouth shut about our little deception.

Living with Xander wasn't all bad, after all - we'd been pretending to be a married couple for a long time by that point, and he and I had been forced to share a bed for keeping up appearances and such. At first, he was even gracious enough to sleep on the floor...

But after that went on for four days, and seeing him hunched over from the back pain resulting from sleeping on that cold, hard floor, I'd ended up telling Xander to just climb into the bed already.

It had been really strange at first, both of us doing everything possible to avoid any kind of contact. Not to mention me telling Xander that that if he dared touch me with his guy parts, I'd be visiting his anatomy with a _very_ dull knife.

But as winter got closer, so did we. Finally, one Sunday morning, I woke up to find us spooning. I knew Xander wouldn't _dare_ to do such a thing, so it must have happened in our sleep.

Instead of causing a scene, I just rolled over, snuggled closer to his warmth, and dozed off again. After that, one thing had eventually led to another - and our first time is something I will _never_, _ever_ forget.

That's the funny thing about Xander Harris - if he gives you his heart, he doesn't hold back in any way, shape or form. Despite our bad history, literally ever since kindergarten, after becoming his first Xander treated me like a queen.

Oh, sure, at the start I was kinda worried that I was just a substitute for that bottle-blonde menace, Buffy Summers - _puh-lease_, I wasn't blind to what was going on between him, Buffy and Willow back then - but as it turns out, I wasn't. Xander loved me for me, especially after the freakazoid had made it clear that she preferred them tall, broody and without a pulse.

Speaking of which - jeez, why hadn't anyone told me that Angel was a vampire? What, was I supposed to just _know_ these things? I'm just glad that he's on the opposite side of the Atlantic right now, as apparently he isn't the cute guy I'd been trying to flirt with yet; he's Angelus, according to what Xander said Giles had told him and the others way back when. The most vicious and homicidal vampire of them all.

But getting back on topic - after we got married anything I wanted, if Xander was able to get it, was mine. In the 'what's mine is yours and what's yours is mine till death do us part' sort of way, that is. He even put up with my rough time with jobs. It wasn't that I couldn't find them, it was _keeping_ them that was the problem.

Woman's lib was a long way off, see, and people expected me to work for half as much as a man for the same amount of, if not more, work. Even worse, they expected me to be _happy_ to do it. I burned through more than a few jobs that way in Philadelphia, after telling my employers to damn well go to hell.

Tatiana, with her infinite patience, taught me how to sew; something I'd never had to learn as the daughter of the richest people in Sunnydale. Surprisingly, I developed a talent for it, and after several months, I was finally able to get a decent job for decent pay. Well, decent for 1866 anyway. I think I would have been able to keep it too, if something else hadn't happened apart from the pregnancy scare.

After all, protection? It was totally against the laws of the Church during this era, even if anyone could invent something that wouldn't hurt or chafe. So Xander and I had to be real careful, as I knew enough about childbirth in the 19th century to be terrified of it. The midwives did a decent job for the most part, sure, but no drugs and no idea what to do if a C-section was required? _No thanks_.

**==0==**

**::The Present::**

Right now though, here Xander and I were, heading west - having left Philadelphia behind. A terrible accident three months ago had turned doing what Xander had loved into a horror show. A two-ton slab of granite that he had rigged up, fell when the ropes had snapped, pinning another worker to the ground.

From the pelvis down, the slab had crushed the man's body, yet he lived for another two hours before finally dying. Xander had totally blamed himself for it, even though everyone from the top down had told him it was an accident and in no way his fault.

I knew that deep down, it was all due to Xander accidentally staking Jesse after the vampire he'd become had tried to kill me in the Bronze that night; but try convincing my stupid, idiotic, yet loveable husband of that.

After drifting from job to job, and finding nothing that held his interest, I had gotten worried. Sure our savings more than covered our costs, ten bits a day wasn't much, but it killed me to see him just so aimless like that.

Not to mention I knew that no matter how careful we were, sooner or later the odds would catch up with us; a baby, maybe even more than one, would eventually show up in our lives.

Because let's face it, sex with Xander was not something I had any intention of depriving myself of. We were married in fact as well as in name, and in the Philadelphia of 1866, our social lives were such that procreation really was the only viable form of recreation.

It's not like how it would have been in Sunnydale, if we'd gotten married after graduating high school; here and now, Xander needed a job to help provide for our family, when the time came.

Then one day the dork came home excited, a copy of The Philadelphia Bulletin in hand. I wasn't sure what had gotten him so worked up, but I considered it a gift from the gods. If something had made him happy, I would be fully behind it. Well, just as long as it wasn't hunting vampires, which luckily we hadn't encountered for over two years by that point.

For one terrifying moment I thought Xander had decided on contacting the Watchers Council, even though we had decided against that in the early days. I mean, seriously - those guys recorded everything, if Giles was anything to judge by, and who knew what might happen if the Watchers cast a truth spell or something on us?

Hello, Xander and I knew pretty much everything that was going to happen for the next 130 years! They'd probably suck us dry and then lock us up in some dungeon or other, for the rest of our lives!

But luckily, Xander quickly explained that a large amount of gold had been found in a place way out west, in Indian country. He'd thought this would be our chance to really make it big - in fact, he was sure we could do it. Become rich, I mean, because he'd remembered that this was when a lot of people had found gold at that place.

After I reminded him about that whole 'changing history' thing, he asked me if I would be happy sewing dresses all my life…

So a week later, after packing up and saying our goodbyes to our Russian friends, we were headed west. As our carriage made its way through Indian territory, I could only hope we'd get there soon.

To an up-and-coming prospecting town known as Deadwood.

**==0==**

**Disclaimer 2: Deadwood and its characters are owned by David Milch and HBO.**

**==0==**

**THE END**


	6. Going Out Together

**Title: Going Out Together**

**Author: zTiamaTz**

**Email: WMullen78 at Yahoo . com**

**Beta By: Starway Man**

**Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel the Series, along with the characters from their respective shows are owned by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.**

**Description: The end is nigh, but Cordelia and Xander get a second chance to connect.**

**A/N: This will be entirely from Cordelia's POV.**

**A/N 2: This takes place during Buffy Season 3, between the episodes: 'The Zeppo' and 'The Wish'.  
**

**==0==**

I sat on the bed in my sunlit bedroom. Judging by the windup clock next to me, I had about three hours left. It was the end of the world, and here I was all alone, hiding in my bedroom like a scared little girl.

The last I'd heard, Mother had dragged Daddy off to Barbados with her newest mid-life crisis, David Junior. Hey, I know he's my brother and all - but I'd taken one look at that baby and immediately known they should have named him Pablo Junior, after the pool boy.

Who knew Sunnydale denial went _that_deep? Still, it doesn't really matter now.

He's never going to get the chance to grow up, poor little kid.

I sighed; even now, I couldn't help but be bitter over the whole thing. I was all alone, now that the end had come; my parents, my Cordettes and their families, my cheater ex, and his loser friends, all of them were long gone.

That was what hurt most of all, you know. If Oz and I hadn't caught Xander kissing that red-headed harlot, then maybe I'd be somewhere safe with them, instead of here alone. They had to have some kind of plan. They _always_did.

Oh, who was I kidding? It wasn't like there was anywhere safe to go around here. Hell, if you didn't live on the summit of the Sierra Nevada, it was safe to say you were pretty much screwed.

I'd tried to get out of town, taking my Mustang and heading down Main Street towards the interstate that led to Los Angeles; only to find it blocked by a ton of cars likewise trying to get out of Sunnydale. It was the same all over southern California, according to the radio - the gridlock apparently stretched as far east as Nevada and New Mexico, maybe even further.

I just didn't see the point sitting there in my car, waiting to die in an eight-cylinder, leather upholstered coffin, when I could just as easily do it in the comfort of my own home. Especially with all of the reports of people being robbed and murdered as they sat in traffic, even some about women dragged out of their cars and forcibly carried off for you-know-what.

_No thanks_. I may not be a virgin anymore, but I definitely don't plan to check out that way.

All of the mansion's staff was gone, of course, they'd taken off to spend what little time they had left with their families. I couldn't help but wince at the irony; I'd spent most of my life looking down my nose at them, and in the end, they had far more than I ever did.

Magda - my former nanny, and Junior's current one - had been the last to leave. She'd begged me to come with her so I wouldn't die alone. I'd told her no; that she needed to spend that time with her grandson, and not worrying about me.

She'd cried a lot, which had caused me to cry a lot too. But in the end she left, too afraid the babysitter would panic and run off. It had been hard enough for Magda after her daughter, Beth, had died. The poor woman had been another casualty of Sunnydale's nightlife.

I blew my nose, finally all cried out. With that out of the way, I was out of things to do. I was kind of hungry, but what was the point anymore of eating? I threw myself back on the bed with a sigh, there was nothing left to do now but wait.

Wait until the Earth turned so that the solar flares - which had already ravaged the other side of the planet, apparently - finally hit Sunnydale.

That's when the banging on my front door started.

**==0==**

I sat up on the bed, as someone pounded on the door, screaming something. I couldn't make out what they were going on about, because my bedroom was at the far corner of the house, on the second floor.

I wasn't sure what to think. Was it somebody from high school eager to get a piece of Queen C before Armageddon came a-calling, or was it simply someone needing help? Of course, I couldn't help but snort at that idea. I was pretty much the _last_person on Earth you wanted to come to, if you needed help.

Heading out of my room, and down the stairs, I figured I had nothing to lose. I was going to die anyway, so I might as well see what all the fuss was about. When I got to the first floor, I heard a muffled male voice yelling, but all I could make out was my own name for sure.

Grabbing a poker from the living room fireplace, I headed toward the front door. Suddenly, all of the noise stopped. A few seconds later there was a loud curse, and then nothing. I went to the window, pushing aside the drapes, I saw someone in a loud yellow and green shirt picking up a bicycle in the driveway.

There was only _one_ person I knew who would wear a shirt _that_awful. Hope filled me as I ran to the door. Maybe they'd found a way to stop this, or at the very least somewhere safe to go until it was over.

Throwing the door open, I could see the big doofus was already half-way down the driveway. He must have thought I'd already left.

"Xander!" I screamed as loud as I could. Oh, _please_let him hear me!

He turned his head so suddenly the front wheel went sideways, and both Harris and the bike fell to the ground. I ran towards him, uncaring of my bare feet. I wasn't going to let a few rocks keep me from making sure my...cheater ex...was okay.

Oh, yeah. Here comes the insanity part of the festivities. I was wondering when it'd show up.

**==0==**

I reached Xander just as he'd finished untangling himself from the bicycle, a ten-speed that looked like it cost more than his father could make in a month. I shook my head; I had to stop thinking like that. "Are you okay?"

He tossed the bike to the side and turned to face me. It looked like he hadn't slept or shaved in days. "Yeah, Cor, you just caught me by surprise." He gave me a sad smile. "Please don't take this the wrong way, but I was kinda hoping I wouldn't find you; that you were long gone from here."

I didn't like the sound of that at all. "What do you mean?"

"Those helicopters that flew over the town a couple of hours ago? I thought you, and the rest of the people around here, might have been flown out to high ground."

I got what 'around here' meant, the rich people. "So what made you change your mind?"

Xander sighed. "We - my parents and I - were stuck in traffic on the I-62, and by chance we ran into Aura and her family in their Land Rover. She told us your parents were in Barbados along with your baby brother, but not you..."

"So, what, you grabbed that bike and came back to Sunnydale? Why?" I shook my head in disbelief.

Xander shrugged. "I wasn't going to leave you alone, not at a time like this."

I slapped him across the face as hard as I could. I couldn't believe he'd done something so _stupid_. "You moron! Wait a minute, what about the rest of your little band of losers?"

He shrugged. "Giles took Buffy, her mom and Faith with him to England with this Council teleportation spell, or whatever it was; I think the plan was for them to join the rest of the Tweed Brigade in their mass evacuation to another dimension, and then they'll come back once all the excitement's over.

As for Angel...well, not that I really care of course, but I heard he's gone deep underground, like all the rest of the vamps around here. Odds are he'll survive what's coming...but he'll starve in the aftermath, just like his undead buddies. Talk about poetic justice after everything that happened last year..."

"I don't get it. Why didn't you go with Mrs. Summers, the Wonder Twins and Mr. Passive-Aggressive Earl Grey Attitude? And what about Willow and Oz?" Not that I actually cared about that little hussy, of course...

"Well, as for question number one, funny thing about the Council - for all their speeches about being the 'guardians of humanity' and all that crap, the teleportation spell Giles had wouldn't work when the G-man tried to include me, Will and Oz. No excess baggage civilians allowed," Xander said sardonically.

"As for question number two, funny thing about being a werewolf - apparently, the only thing that can kill them is silver. That's why Oz finally bit Willow and then carried her off to his van; guy said something about heading cross-country as far as possible. I think they'll live through this...well, as far as I know a werewolf can't die from drowning, anyway."

"And Willow was _okay_with that?" Something about that scenario just didn't seem right to me.

"I figure she would have been...if I hadn't knocked her unconscious before Oz inducted her into the Lon Chaney club," Xander admitted, looking down. Then he looked back up at me.

"Had to be done, Cor. There's no way Will would have left me behind, and I knew for a fact that Oz wasn't interested in my becoming the next American Werewolf in Sunnydale. So I did what I had to do, this morning...and hopefully, one day, Willow will be able to forgive me for it."

**==0==**

In my heart, I knew he was right, but seeing him here and now brought a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, there was some kind of chance for us too. "What about everyone else we know at school?"

"Who knows? I guess there's a chance they'll find somewhere to ride out what's coming, but myself, I really doubt it." Xander shrugged. "There just wasn't enough time."

"Research?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

"Sure," Xander replied bitterly. "Us, and everyone else in the know on the planet looked. But there's absolutely nothing magic-y about it, it's just fate..."

Fate? Yeah, right.

I knew about solar flares from Science class, of course; how they're like totally unpredictable, both in strength and duration. I even vaguely remembered something about solar activity occurring as part of a cycle, how we were supposed to be in the middle of an active period right now.

Ultraviolet radiation, X-rays, cosmic rays and God knows what else kind of particles hitting the atmosphere, disrupting radio communication and causing auroras.

But this? We're talking activity that's like totally unprecedented, flares punching out of the sun like human fists and arriving on Earth a day or so later. Flares causing gales and hurricanes and tornadoes in the atmosphere, not to mention tidal waves miles high heading for dry land at incredible speed.

And Sunnydale was built right next to the friggin' Pacific Ocean...

"So how did your parents take it, when you told them you were coming back to find me?" I asked, focusing back on the here and now.

"I doubt my dad even noticed I left. My mom wasn't happy, at least not at first. Then I told her I couldn't leave behind the woman I love, and she just shrugged and opened the door for me to hit the road."

I couldn't believe he'd say something like that. "That's _not_funny, Xander," I accused. "I thought we were past all the jokes!"

"Who's joking, Cor? Even if I'd thought we had any realistic chance of making it to safety, if you weren't with me - well, what's the point?"

I couldn't help but wonder, was he serious? He had left everyone else behind to come here. "Why-"

I was interrupted when something on Xander started beeping. "What is that?"

"My watch," he told me, as he checked the time. "We've got two and a half hours left, Cor."

"What are we going to do?" I asked softly.

"I figure we've got two options; we can make a run for it on the bike, _maybe_find a motorcycle and hope for the best," he explained evenly. "Or, we could go into the house, have a nice last dinner, and spend what little time we have left together."

The big dork frowned. "Well, that's assuming you're okay with me staying with you. Hey, if you want me to go, I will! I'd heard that there was gonna be a big end-of-the-world party at the Bronze, actually..."

Which was a typical dumb ass thing for Sunnydale's citizens, naturally enough. What kind of party would that be, anyway? Probably some kind of Roman-style orgy or something. Well, screw that. There was no way I was going to let Xander humiliate himself that way.

I thought about it; if Xander thought there was any real chance for us to get to safety, we'd already be on our way. Was his idea any different than mine? To sit waiting for the end in my house, rather than in a traffic jam?

"Come on," I told him, holding out my hand. He had given up any (admittedly almost non-existent) chance for safety to be here with me. Xander Harris was an idiot; but here and now, when the past didn't matter anymore, he was _my_idiot. "Let's go eat."

Finally smiling, the dork-head took my hand and we headed back to the manor, leaving the bicycle behind. Ready to enjoy the little time we had left together, even if it didn't mean anything anymore.

**==0==**

Xander was inside the kitchen, rifling through the refrigerator for something that befitted a last meal. His argument had been, why worry about calories now? At this point, I couldn't agree more, so I got busy looking through the cabana for the barbecue utensils.

Daddy had paid through the nose to get the stainless steel set made in Germany. Just so they would go perfectly with the custom-built brick barbecue oven he had installed in the backyard last year. I'd remembered how much he'd bragged about them to his golf buddies, even as they _watched_Roberto do all the cooking for them.

As I left the cabana, I saw Xander coming out of the house with several bags in hand. I was guessing he'd found something appropriate for a last meal. I couldn't call it a last supper; it was barely an hour past lunch.

"How does Porterhouse steaks and baked potatoes sound?" he asked, as he placed his load onto a small table next to the grill.

"Fantastic!" I called to him, eager to eat some real food. Since I suffered from a slow metabolism, I had to work hard keep my body in the perfect shape it was; and that meant no pigging out at all. Now, though, why bother?

"Queen C doing manual labor?" Xander questioned jokingly. "I guess you do see something new every day..."

"Keep it up, dork, and I'll punt your butt into the gazebo!" I threatened him, before dropping the utensils and the half bag of charcoal next to him.

"I hear and obey, your majesty."

"That's more like it." I headed back toward the house, eager to get phase two started. "Now get those steaks going while I take care of some stuff inside!"

"Yes, Mistress!"

**==0==**

As I toweled off from my shower, I looked out my bedroom window down to where Xander was cooking our steaks with a smile. I knew I should be petrified; I could measure my lifespan in scant hours, after all. There was nowhere to go; the destruction arising from the solar flares had to be approaching fast.

Sure, I could crawl back under my blankets and sob some more, but what would be the point of that?

Xander was here. Now. For maybe the first time ever, I was his priority. He'd called me the girl he loved, and I'd believed him; how could I not? Sure, you could argue that he was just saying that; that the stupid ass was hoping to finally sweet-talk me into bed before California went the way of the dodo, go out with a bang and not a whimper - so to speak.

But deep in my heart of hearts, I didn't believe that. I think deep down, we both knew how that wasn't going to happen. Maybe if he hadn't cheated on me with Willow all those months ago, right now we'd both be in my bedroom and screwing each other so hard we wouldn't even notice when Sunnydale was utterly destroyed...

But that particular fantasy was just that, now; a fantasy.

Still, when everyone else had left me, he had come back. Xander came looking for me. He chose me instead of his parents...instead of Willow. Hey, I'm not dumb; I was able to figure out that if he'd wanted to, Xander could have gotten Willow to bite him the same way Oz had bitten her, so that he wouldn't have been left behind.

Or else Oz would have done it, if Harris had asked politely; that guy wouldn't have wanted his girlfriend pissed at him for being petty enough to eliminate the competition, or whatever.

But instead, Xander chose his own path. After encountering Aura and her family, he chose me. I know I should be ashamed of myself for thinking of one-upmanship at this late date, but hey, I'm not perfect; I got a real warm feeling in my stomach knowing that right at the end, I'd finally got Xander away from that red-haired little boyfriend-stealer.

I walked back to the mirror, and did a final adjustment on my hair. I was wearing what  
_should_have been my winter formal dress. I'd set aside one of Daddy's tuxes for Xander to wear as well.

The way I saw it, since we were going to die soon, we might as well look our best at the end. Seeing him take the steaks off the grill and onto plates, I grabbed my heels, and headed downstairs, eager to get things moving.

Heading to the kitchen shortly after, I stopped in the doorway, and found him placing everything on plates.

"Wow, Cor," Xander said, almost in awe. "You look...you look fantastic in that dress!"

I smiled at that; unlike my sheep, I could always count on the dweeb for a _genuine_compliment straight from the heart. "Thanks, dork, now why don't you go take a quick shower? The water's not that warm anymore, but you'll survive."

"What about the food-"

"Xander, you stink." I held my nose to emphasize my point. "Besides, I laid out one of Daddy's tuxedos for you to wear. Now hurry up and get back here, before the food gets cold!"

He shrugged and nodded, and headed out of the kitchen toward the stairs. "Gotcha, Cor, which room?" he called out as he headed for the inside of the house.

"Mine, of course, I'm _sure_ you remember the way!" Considering the experiences he'd had in there before it had all fallen apart, he damn well _better_.

**==0==**

Twenty minutes later Xander reappeared, freshly showered and shaved. Best of all, he looked very handsome in that tuxedo. I sucked back a sigh at the thought that in another life, maybe we really could have made it work.

"You did a hell of a job, Cordy," Xander complimented me, as he looked around at the brightly candle-lit dining room. "It looks like you really went all out, here."

I smiled at that, glad he'd actually noticed. When we'd been dating, he would never even notice when I'd gotten a new hairstyle. I guessed when it was this close to the end, you really started seeing the little things you never cared about before.

"Yeah, I got Mother's best tablecloth and silver," I told him, as I pulled out the two chairs side-by-side in the middle section of the twelve-foot-long table. "It's not like she's going to be able to complain about it."

"Hey, aren't we supposed to sit at either end?"

"Very funny, dork, now sit down and eat!"

**==0==**

"At least my sixth grade science project actually _worked_," Xander said, before shoveling another spoonful of potatoes into his mouth.

"Very funny, mister 'what liquid will keep an ice cube from melting the longest?'!" I shot back. "Really, who's going to keep their ice cubes in olive oil when they have a perfectly good freezer?"

"Oh, like you're one to talk, miss '_generic volcano_'! All that cash your dad put out, and all the lava stuff ended up leaking out the bottom and all over that dress you'd bragged about for days!"

Damn it, I had been _so_sure that the volcano Daddy had paid an arm and a leg for would beat Willow's project. Instead, I'd ended up bawling into Magda's hip as I tried to hide my ruined dress, and Willow had won first place instead...

"Well, what about-" I stopped as Xander's watch started beeping. It had been going off every half hour, and it was a sound I'd quickly learned to despise.

I stared at him, as he looked up from the watch. Xander tried to keep a straight face, but I still saw a tiny shudder pass through him.

"We've got thirty minutes left, Cor."

**==0==**

I led Xander by the hand up to the patio roof. It was the place I came to tan without a bathing suit, away from the prying eyes of the staff. Now, it was going to be the closest thing to a grave we'd ever have.

After his watch had beeped, neither of us was hungry any longer. Leaving the food and dishes where they were, we'd decided to come up here and face our fate, rather than hide from it.

Shoving two of the loungers side-by-side, we laid there together in each other's arms, facing toward the ocean, and enjoying what little time we had left.

God damn it, this wasn't fair! I think...no, I'm sure I could have forgiven Xander for his actions eventually! I didn't want for us to die! Not now! Not like this!

"Cordelia? There it is." Xander pointed with his right hand to something in the northwest.

To me, it just looked like a big blue smudge on the horizon. But I was never one to delude myself. "I never thought it would be like this," I muttered, as I tried to hold back tears.

"I know," Xander agreed, as his chin rested atop my head. The wind had definitely started picking up, it was much colder now. "Thing is, Cordy, whenever I thought about the future? I always pictured you as this huge movie star or something, and I was your trusty man-servant."

"Man-servant?" I asked with a giggle.

"Okay..." Harris said with an embarrassed sigh. "More like the guy that picks up the cigarette butts outside the gates of your palatial mansion."

"That's more like it, you big dork." I brought his hand up and gave it a kiss. Oh boy, just seeing the look in his eyes; I suddenly wanted more. "Just as long as you remember that I'm the boss around here."

"I wouldn't want it any other way, Cordy." Right after that, his damned watch went off again.

Reflexively, I dropped his hand. That timepiece had become the symbol of doom, and I suddenly hated it more than I had anything else in my entire life.

"Five minutes. Probably less, actually," Xander said through my hair, the wind much stronger now.

Grabbing his wrist with both hands, I quickly undid the clasp. I sat up in the lounger, pulled back my hand, and threw the watch as far as I could off the roof. The end was here, but there was no reason to let it laugh in our faces.

"Feel better?" Xander asked as I lay back down.

"No."

I let him wrap his arms around me once again, before snuggling into his side. The sun was gone, and the wind a loud roar now. "Alright, maybe a little." It had been nice to have some control back, even if it was just for a few seconds.

There was a flash of lightning, and we both looked to see the blue smudge - the tidal wave of sea water - coming in fast. It grew bigger and bigger with every passing second. Xander was right; it was less than five minutes before the end of the world.

"It'll hit Sunnydale any minute now," Xander said nervously

I screamed and shoved my face into Xander's chest, as a huge flash of light went off to the southwest of us. "Oh, God-!"

When I turned back to look, there was a mushroom cloud - just like the ones you'd see on those old films about the nuclear weapons tests during World War Two. Just then, a blast wave of freezing cold air hit us, nearly knocking us off the patio roof.

"I love you, Cordy. And I'm so sorry I ever hurt you like that." Xander started to kiss me on the top of my head, but I pulled back.

What the hell had I been thinking before? Right now Xander and I should have been in bed together, holding each other tight and not thinking we were about to die a painful and horrible death!

Coming face to face, I pressed my lips against his, eager to get one last smooch with my ex-boyfriend. Hearing the wind quickly turning into a deadly hurricane, I finally came up for air. I looked the doofus straight in the eyes, wanting him to believe what I was about to tell him...

"I love you too, Xander Harris. And I forgive you."

In response, I got that funny old lop-sided smile of his. I was relieved to see that he believed me; because I didn't want Xander to die thinking I didn't feel the same about him, as he did for me.

The roar of the wind had now become deafening; we were blown off the roof, landing painfully onto the patio. Looking back towards the Pacific, I could fully see the tidal wave now. It was hundreds of feet tall, and I couldn't imagine how anyone could possibly escape it.

Everyone around here was going to die, werewolves and vampires and demons aside.

Seeing the tidal wave bearing down on us, impossibly fast, I had to know one last thing. "Do you think there's a heaven?" I screamed, hoping Xander could still hear me.

The wave was less than five hundred feet away, when my love brought his mouth close to my ear.

"If there's a hell like we know there is, Hellmouth 'n all, then there's got to be a heaven, Cor!" Xander pulled me in tightly against him and I did the same, holding on with everything I had left.

There was brief, agonizing pain as the humongous wall of water hit; I'm pretty sure Xander and I were smashed into the brick wall of the manor, before it all went dark and cold and silent. But it didn't matter anymore.

They say confession is good for the soul. And now, hopefully, our souls would be together in Paradise forever.

**==0==**

**A/N 3: I started a World War Z style story not to long ago called 'Z War: The Council Interviews'. If you haven't checked it out, give it a try, and let me know what you think.**

**==0==**

**THE END**


	7. Old Man Harris

**Title: Old Man Harris**

**Author: zTiamaTz**

**Email: WMullen78 at Yahoo . com**

**Beta By: Starway Man**

**Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel the Series, along with the characters from their respective shows, are owned by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.**

**Description: In 2062, Alexander Harris is and old man. That doesn't stop him from doing what's right, whether the head slayer likes it or not.**

**Continuity: None**

**A/N: This story will be entirely from Xander's POV.  
**

**==0==**

I didn't get to be eighty-two friggin' years old by being dumb, no matter what some people around here might think.

Sometimes, I hear the Potentials wondering amongst themselves how 'Old Man Harris' had managed to make it this far. Late at night when I'm alone in bed, I wonder too. The answer is actually pretty simple – by playing to my strengths. Doing what I did best – _survive_.

If that meant standing around in the background as none of the heroes noticed me, slowly working my way up the ladder as Buffy, Faith, and all the other Slayers I'd known as a young man went out in a blaze of glory, becoming the number two man of the Council thanks to Giles' recommendation before he passed away of old age? Well, then, so be it.

Kinda ironic, though. Back when Sunnydale still existed, those people who thought for sure I was gonna die if I took part in the slayage? They're the one who are all dead now, while I'm still here.

And apparently nowadays I'm also the last one of a different kind, it happened just the other day: of the roughly thirty-two thousand people who had called the Hellmouth 'home' back in 2003, there is only one former resident left alive today. _Me_.

Old Man Harris. The last survivor of Sunnydale.

**==0==**

I sat down behind my desk, and laid the now-antique M1911 down in front of me. I rubbed my aching left knee, a casualty of a demon attack some years ago. For sure, my body wasn't as spry as it used to be; but it wasn't the body of some old has-been couch potato, either.

Across the room lay the bodies of a couple of Slayers, two girls I'd personally killed just now: they'd been cut down with my own pistol. It'd be one thing if I'd gone senile and done it by accident, but the real explanation was even worse. It was self-defense.

The timing was no surprise, though, Willow had been killed in a so-called 'car accident' barely two days ago. I hadn't even attended her funeral yet. With the most powerful witch in the world dead, there was no reason for my…adversary, to hide any longer.

I pulled a small, wooden box from a drawer. Carefully taking the latch off, I put the rectangular device down on the desk. On it was a single, red button, one that years ago I'd hoped I'd never have to press.

The day had finally come, though, and press it I did. Yanking open the bottom drawer on my desk, I angrily threw the device inside, before pulling out a bottle of bourbon and a shot glass.

I poured one off and drank it down, enjoying the burn. After that I poured another, but I quickly decided to leave it alone. Even after all these years, the word 'alcoholic' left a bad taste in my mouth – let alone the phrase, 'son of the town drunk'.

Sometimes it's hard to remember my dad's been dead for decades – Christ, it'll be sixty years next year, the anniversary of Sunnyhell completely sinking into the earth. Still, his legacy can never be forgotten.

What was it Angel once said? Who we were often determines who we are, or something like that. Something which Darla had told him, back when he was Angelus and still had dirt behind his ears.

Grumbling, I turned on the holo-phone at my desk, and typed in a number from memory. I knew she was behind it: I just wanted to let her know how miserably her minions had failed.

_Is it done yet?_ A heavily accented voice asked off-screen.

I snorted: she hadn't even bothered to see who had called her, she was _that_ confident. "I'm afraid this _it_ is something we need to discuss, Rafaela."

**==0==**

Rafaela Penzo was an Italian national, and current head of the Council. At seventy-three years old, she looked more like forty. That's what you get when you had money to burn, and an excellent plastic surgeon.

Backed by a huge inheritance, Rafaela could have bought and sold Cordelia and Kennedy's parents' holdings without a second thought. Post-World War II, her family had gotten mega-rich through an import-export company her grandfather had founded.

When Buffy had finally settled down in Rome, and had gotten her back-pay from the Council coffers for eight years of slaying, fifteen-year-old Rafaela had latched onto her as a 'consultant'. She'd shown Buffy all the finest restaurants and stores Rome had to offer, ingratiating herself with my co-best friend – and the girl did a damn fine job of it, too, I have to admit.

With the rest of the old Scooby Gang spread throughout the world, Buffy had needed someone to spend time with – well, besides her little sister and her pet nerd. But after Dawn had moved to England with a scholarship to Oxford, and that chowder-head Andrew had been killed by an incubus, things with Rafaela had ramped up quickly.

She'd wormed her way in so deeply, that when Buffy had taken early retirement at the age of forty, no one had been surprised that Rafaela had been named her successor. I didn't blame the Buffster for it, though, no one could have known what she'd been intending to do once she took full control of the organization.

Namely, turn it into the Slayer version of the Mafia. It was amazing she didn't end up calling herself 'Donna Rafaela', I kid you not.

Rafaela rushed into view on screen, almost knocking her chair over in haste. _Signore Harris!_ Her guppy impression upon seeing me, left little doubt of her involvement. _How may I be of assistance to you today?_

"You can start by arranging to have all the blood on my floor cleaned up."

_I- I do not understand..._

I grinned at her. "Of course you don't. You can't understand why two of your best Slayers are the ones who are lying dead on the floor right now, instead of me. Did you really think I wouldn't take steps to safeguard something very important to me – namely, my own life?"

**==0==**

_Signore Harris, I can assure you, I have no idea what you speak of._She laid her innocent act on real thick, as if I was going to buy that.

I sighed, feeling every single one of my eighty-two years walking this sorry world. Part of the reason we were at this crossroads, was because I knew exactly what Penzo was capable of.

I'd been against her involvement in the higher echelons of the Council from the moment I'd met her, back in 2004. Since then, we'd hated each other even worse than Angel had hated Spike for sleeping with Buffy.

"I see. So, then, Rafaela, the fact that two of your Slayers just tried to kill me, only two days after Willow died in a car accident, is just an astonishing coincidence? I think not."

_Are you sure they-_

"Their assassination attempt was recorded, yeah, despite a mysterious power outage on the surveillance cams. Now tell me something. How many Slayers are there in the world nowadays, Rafaela?"

She gave me a look of disdain, before rattling off the number. _Nineteen hundred and eighty. Why do you ask?_

"Well, think about it, shouldn't that be seventy-eight now?"

_You seem to revel in the deaths of my sister Slayers. I do not think you are well._

I sighed. "Let's cut the bullshit once and for all. We both know you've wanted me out of the way for a long time. Sixty years, almost." I took no pleasure in causing the deaths of those Slayers, but I damn well wanted my point to be made clear.

_You are obviously delusional-_

I gave her a big smile, before cutting her off. "Here's the sixty-four million dollar question, though, just how many of those Slayers are loyal to you?"

She sneered openly at me, all pretense of civility was gone now. _I am the head of the Council, you geriatric finocchio! They do what I tell them or will suffer the consequences!_

The very _thought_ that she wasn't in complete control of the Chosen crowd drove her nuts, I could tell. Rafaela continued making threats about this or that, but I pretty much tuned her out. I was more interested with what was happening behind her.

In the background of the screen, I could see three figures coming at her. Rafaela was so focused on her ranting, that even with her Slayer senses, she didn't notice their approach.

I used to have a soft spot for all things Slayer – Faith was my first, and seven years later she became my wife, not to mention the mother of my daughter – so I gave Penzo one last chance.

"Let me ask you something, Rafaela: if you were given the chance to step down from your position and walk away from the Council, would you do it?"

The three figures stopped a few feet away from her, awaiting her reply. How she answered, was the very definition of 'life or death'.

_How dare you, you- you one-eyed son of a prostitute!_Spittle flew into the screen, as Rafaela raged at my suggestion.

_Harris, the next time there are going to be ten Slayers coming through your door, so you had better say your prayers right now-_

She was cut off however, when a wire looped around her throat. As she reached for it, her arms were grabbed, and pulled out to the sides. Rafaela looked straight ahead at me, her earlier attempts to see her attackers had made the wire cut deep into her neck and blood started to pour out in a thick fountain.

"I gave you an out, and you wouldn't take it..." I explained, as I watched her eyes bulge out in realization. "Now you're going to suffer the consequences."

_Yeah,_ The Slayer holding the now-former Council head's left arm, ducked down so that Rafaela could get a good look at her face. _It's a revolution._Penzo's former top lieutenant, my daughter Allison, informed her.

Francesca and Sana made their identities known as well, letting Penzo know _exactly _who was behind this.

Sana looked up to the screen at me, her hands firmly holding the wire in place, as Rafaela finally stopped struggling. _Boss? She's gone. Do we proceed with the rest of the plan?_

The plan? Oh, yeah, _the plan_. The plan I'd come up with a long time ago. Hand-picking three Slayers (volunteers, admittedly) to be hypnotized, brainwashed into thinking they were Rafaela's loyal servants and taking their place at her side.

Spying on her, their unconscious minds were always ready for the trigger to be received after I pressed the red button. The trigger to restore their true identities, and their true purpose: to kill their so-called master.

Thank God Faith had never lived to see this, even if she was the one who had given me the idea way back when.

As I looked at the corpse on the screen, I truly wished it hadn't come to this. But Raffaela's misuse of Council power and the Slayers below her had forced my hand. As far as I knew, this had been her first attempt at outright murder – apart from Willow's death, of course – and that was crossing a line she couldn't come back from.

It wasn't like it had been back in the twentieth century, when Faith had gone to jail for killing people: Rafaela was never going to change, and she wasn't the least bit sorry for everything she'd done over the last sixty years, either.

With a sigh, I finally answered Sana and the others, "_Do it_, round up all the Slayers that are - sorry, that were - loyal to her. Try not to kill any of them, but if they resist, and it's damn well certain that some of them will, you and the rest of my girls know what to do."

I used my desk to help me get to my feet, my damn knee was still acting up. "Allison, meet me at the command center; I'll be there in a few minutes."

As the wire completely sliced through Raffaela's neck to make sure no one would be able to resurrect her afterwards, I switched off the holo-phone and drank down the second shot of bourbon.

It was time to clean up the Council's mess for a second time, put someone worthy in charge...and then give serious consideration to a long-overdue vacation.

**==0==**

**THE END**


	8. Better Then Life

**Title: Better Then Life**

**Author: zTiamaTz**

**Email: WMullen78 at Yahoo . com**

**Beta By: Starway Man**

**Description: After being put on forcible leave from the Council following a tragedy, Xander finds out how the world really works.**

**Continuity: While not essential to this story, you cna get mor background on Xander's time in Africa from the first chapter of my story: 'The Hard Way Out of Hell'. Other thenthe setting, this story in no way effects the other.**

**A/N: This story will be entirely from Xander's POV.**

**==0==**

**::Three Weeks Ago::**

Africa. Not the funnest place to spend your time working for the new International Watchers Council, that's for sure. Me, I didn't complain though. It sure as hell beat Sunnydale, and besides the pay was a lot better.

Thing is we'd been waiting for this plane to show up for four hours, and the pilot was way overdue. We were standing next to the very small building that worked as a control tower for a dirt road airfield.

As I said - standing around waiting for a converted cargo plane to show up was not my idea of fun. It was going to be a long ride from Burkina Faso to Nairobi; one that I wasn't looking forward to. Kenya wasn't exactly a safe place these days, and I don't think they liked white men much in that country, either.

Well, whatever. My last mission in Africa is dropping off two slayers at the school there in Nairobi and picking up some paperwork. Then it was off to London with Sabi, Anne, and her sister Emma, to see what my colleagues wanted me to do next.

My fourteen-year-old slayer Natama Habib was from Burkina Faso. We'd taken a few days to check out a report that her missing mother had been found in a refugee camp. Unfortunately, it didn't pan out; the woman just had a very strong resemblance to Mrs. Habib, that's all.

The other slayer, nineteen-year-old Ouattara Legesse, was from Dessie; this place in Ethiopia. She was an orphan as well, something I'd unfortunately found a lot of the slayers on this continent had in common. While they'd been trained at the Johannesburg school, they were being transferred to Nairobi to fill two open spots.

"Do we have everything ready to go?" I asked as I glanced at my watch, for what must have been the hundredth time. Where was the damn pilot?

"Gee, boss, you act like we've never been on a plane before," Sabi replied from the ground, where she was letting Emma braid her hair.

"I know you have, which is why I'm asking. Because we are _not _turning around because someone forgot their favorite sword this time."

Other than the M1911 I carried as my personal sidearm, we'd already packed away all of the weapons since we were using a commercial cargo plane for this ride. Little things like news that you're carrying swords and guns spread like wildfire in Africa, and all I needed was some over-eager UN peacekeepers trying to arrest us for being arms traffickers.

I'd never had to shoot one of _them _before, and I didn't plan to start now.

**==0==**

Twenty minutes later, the plane finally landed. It must have been some sorta minor miracle, I swear. Anyway, myself and the two pilots started loading the crates into the plane, while the girls carried the small stuff. Had to keep up appearances up and all, we were in public and the pilots didn't know who we really were.

We were just about finished when I caught sight of a disturbance ahead, and to the right of the nose of the plane. Suddenly the jungle exploded outward, and about two dozen people came screaming out of the jungle straight toward us.

I drew down on the group, even as I barked orders at the girls. "Get everything on the fucking plane, now!" Even with the gun clearly pointed at them, the group kept coming, so I opened fire.

I watched in shock as a man at the head of the pack took three rounds to the chest, and yet kept coming. When he game-faced in broad daylight, though, that was when my jaw nearly hit the ground. By that point I could see several others had done the exact same, impossible thing.

The situation was already FUBAR, but I had the horrible suspicion there was worse to come.

"Incoming vamps!" I continued firing into the group, hoping to buy my girls some time.

The one I'd shot in the chest tackled me, and the fight was on. We were badly outnumbered, but we weren't going down easy, that was for sure...

**==0==**

**::The Present::**

I sat at the bar staring at the shot of Schwabischer. I'd already had three of them, and with this one, I could start on the second level of my shot glass pyramid. My hesitation was due to the rumbling in my stomach; I had barely eaten anything in two days.

Screw it. I downed the shot, and tapped the bar for another.

I was in a small city called Straubing, it was located in Bavaria. One of those places you go to when you wanted to be lost, not found. I'd wanted to get away from watchers and slayers and everything else. This place was as good as any, since the closest Council team was stationed in Munich.

Thing is, I'd lost four slayers and one of their sisters. Plus, Anne was in a coma at the London headquarters, prognosis: grim. Even if she did ever wake up, she'd have to deal with all the souvenir scars on her face; and the fact her little sister, Emma, was dead.

I knew my job with the Council was all but officially over. Nobody was willing to believe that a group of vampires had attacked us at that airfield, in broad daylight. Well, hell, who in their right mind would believe that? Or that a woman in black had appeared out of the jungle, and tore through twenty-plus vampires with nothing but her hands and a pistol?

Sure, the Sunnydale alumni remembered when Spike had taken a walk in the daylight due that gem he'd found way back when; but since there was only ever the one and Deadboy had destroyed it years ago, nobody who mattered thought I was telling the truth. Or maybe they did, and it just suited their political agenda to say otherwise.

Giles was having problems with all the traditional blowhards who'd survived the Council massacre last year, I knew that; and if trying to discredit me would strip him of an ally and isolate the G-man even further, so much the better in their minds, I suppose.

Shit. I really hated Council politics.

The new shot came, and I had to block my pyramid from being taken away by the bartender. After making sure he'd walked away to the other end of the bar, I stared at my new shot. For a German whiskey, it was pretty damn good.

They were trying to call it PTSD, all the stress from Anya dying, and having to fight my way back and forth through Africa in search of slayers. That was bullshit, I wasn't nuts. Problem was, there were only two witnesses. One was in a coma, and the other had disappeared before the last vamp's dust had even hit the ground.

"Excuse me. Are you Herr Harris?"

I looked up from my drink, to see the bartender standing there in front of me. How the hell had he gotten my name? "Yeah."

"You have a telephone call," he replied simply, pointing toward the phone at the end of the bar by the window.

Damn it. I'd deliberately left my phone in London so the Council couldn't track me with GPS. And even if they'd bugged Will to do a locator spell, they'd still have a two block radius to cover on foot. Why hadn't they just come in?

After moving over to the phone, I was annoyed. They were the ones that had said I needed time off, so why was the Council bugging me now? Unless the plan was to annoy me enough into doing something monumentally stupid...which, and let's face it, was looking mighty tempting right now.

Picking up the phone, I decided to just cut the bullshit. "Look, I'll be-"

**:**_Guten tag, Alexander,_**:**a woman's voice interrupted me, with no detectable accent.

I didn't recognize the voice at all. "Who is this?"

**:**_First, a question. Do you want to know why those vampires that attacked you were able to be out in the sunlight?_**:**

"Listen, lady-!" Then I realized I'd said that a little too loud, since everyone in the bar was looking at me. Cupping my hand over the receiver, I continued, "I don't know who you are, but if you're calling to screw with my mind-"

**:**_What? You'll send slayers after me? The same kind of girls I had to save three weeks ago?_**:**

Damn. It was her? Suddenly I found myself a lot more interested in the conversation. Witness number two was just what I needed to get the Council blowhards to actually pay attention to me, and get them off the G-man's back to dump me. But first, there was something I had to know.

"If you had anything to do with that attack, lady, I can promise you a world of hurt right now."

She snorted over the line. **:**_If you want to find out the truth, I'm willing to give it to you. All you have to do is follow the turkey dinner, and find the answer._**:**

"What's that supposed-" But before I could finish my question, the line went dead.

I hung up the phone, pissed off. Ask me to trudge through a jungle, or kill a group of African rebels, no problem. But try to figure out that brainteaser? Yeah, right. As if I'm in the mood to play that sort of game right now, anyway.

I turned around to head back to my bar stool, when I saw a bus through the window. The advertisement on its side showed a full spread of food, including what looked to be a Thanksgiving turkey.

Even if it was just a coincidence, it wasn't like there was a reason for me to stick around this dive any longer. So quickly tossing more than enough euros onto the bar, I took off after the bus with the turkey dinner picture on it.

So sue me, I couldn't resist trying to find out the reasons why four of my girls had been killed recently.

**==0==**

I'd been sitting on this bus for twenty minutes, looking for anything that could be 'the answer'. Besides the overly vague phone call, I was pissed that I'd had to run four blocks before the damn bus came to a stop.

Finally, though, I'd had enough. It was already dark, so when I saw a sign for a hostel, I decided to grab a bed for the night. This had obviously been a waste of time; next time, if there was one, the mystery lady would have to meet up with me.

After getting off the bus, I headed up the steps to the doors, only to have to step aside as they came flying open. A group of American girls came out dressed for clubbing. They were talking excitedly, not that I cared. But then...

...one of them said something that definitely caught my attention.

"Excuse me, ladies..."

They all turned to me as one; it reminded a lot of how the Cordettes acted in high school, when Cordy had led them around by their noses. Damn, but it was a painful reminder of the days of yore. Weird how all that now seems like the good old days, when at the time - it had felt like anything but.

A blond, who seemed to be the 'queen' of the group, leered at me. "Hey, Mister Pirate, see something you like?"

"There's a lot to like, miss." I wasn't lying; if they weren't all barely eighteen, I'd be a lot more interested. "But one of you mentioned something about '_the answer_' just now, uh - can you tell me what you meant by that?"

"It's a club - right over there," Miss Tall, Blond and Busty replied, pointing to a building down the street on the corner. The neon sign read, '**Die Antwort**'. "Jeez, don't you know like any German?"

I shrugged. "Haven't been in the country all that long, and besides - I've been kinda busy learning Arabic in Africa lately."

"O-kay," the blond replied, giving me a weird look as her sheep giggled behind her. "Well, whatever. That's why we hired a translator." She gestured to an older, red-headed girl at the back of the group, who appeared to be in her mid-twenties. "Sarah here handles all that stuff for us."

I gave the translator a smile, no reason to be rude after all. "I wouldn't mind having a cute girl like you following me around town."

In response, she just stared at me; kinda like I had just farted in public. _Real_ friendly.

The blond just shrugged at that. "Anyway, if you're thinking of going there - I'd clean up a bit first, they don't let just _anybody_ in." With that said, she turned around and her sheep parted as she walked through them, heading directly towards the club.

When all of them had gone, I did a quick sniff test. Yeah, I suppose I could use a shower.

**==0==**

After cleaning myself up in the hostel, I bought a clean dress shirt from a guy I'd met in the hallway; something acceptable enough for the clubbing scene. That dude quickly turned into a real pain in the ass, though, since he kept going on and on about how I should visit some other hostel in Slovakia.

Finally though, I managed to ditch him, and made my way toward Die Antwort. I couldn't help but think how much easier this would have been, if the woman had told me what it was in German. What if I had rode the bus right past the damn place?

Well, that's assuming of course that all this wasn't just one hell of a coincidence, and I wasn't just totally wasting my time coming here to this German nightclub. Still, I was never much of a believer in coincidence in Sunnydale. And the vibes I was getting now reminded me of the old home town way too much.

As I got to the club doors, I saw a couple of bouncers keeping people waiting in line to enter behind a rope. Christ, I hoped I wouldn't be waiting long to get in. I headed toward the back of the line, when someone called out to me.

"Herr Harris?"

I looked back to see one of the bouncers waving me over to him. Intrigued, I walked over. "Yes?"

"Your friend is waiting inside for you, on the second floor. She asked us to pass you through immediately."

"How did you pick me out of the crowd?" I asked curiously.

He grinned and tapped his left eyebrow.

Of course. It's been over a year; I was so used to the eye-patch, I hardly noticed it anymore. He held open the door, and I was about to go in, when I suddenly had a thought.

"Mind if I bring in a few guests?"

"Nein, Herr Harris. How many in your party?"

"Seven."

His eyes went wide. I was guessing he'd been told to let me in free of charge, but I doubted he'd had any idea that I was going to have a request like that.

"If it helps - I should mention they're all pretty hot-looking women, and they look like have plenty of American dollars to spend." To be honest I didn't really know why I was doing the blond and her sheep this favor; but then again, if it hadn't been for those girls, who knew how long it would have taken to meet up with the mysterious woman in black?

The two bouncers looked at each other. I could tell what they were thinking; the cover charge wasn't that big, plus the more hot girls in the club, the more paying clientele they could bring in at some future time. I had them, and they knew it.

"When will your party be arriving?" the second bouncer asked.

"They're already here, actually," I told him, gesturing toward the line. "Hang on, I'll go get them." Without waiting for a reply, I went in search of the pseudo-Cordettes.

They weren't hard to find, the loud voices and giggles were a dead giveaway. Teenagers. I got their attention, as the 'queen' caught sight of me. "Ladies."

"Hey, look, it's the pirate!" Miss Tall, Blond and Busty greeted me with a smile. "You cleaned up a little, I see. Want to jump in line with us?"

"I've got a better idea; why don't you all come into the club with me, right now?"

Their reactions were exactly what I'd anticipated. I wanted to cover my ears from all the girl-y squeals erupting from the sheep, but I knew I was manly enough to take it. I'd heard worse in my time, after all.

As I held the rope up for them to pass under, I heard one of the sheep compliment the blond: "Wow, Heather, I take it all back! You sure do know how to pick them!"

The redhead gave me a strange look as she came up from under the rope, but I ignored it and her. I had learned over the last year or so that some people were just put off by the eye-patch. I'd learned to deal with it, and just let it go.

As we headed back to the door, Heather looped her arm around mine. "So, what's your name anyway?"

"Xander. And let me guess, you're Queen H?"

Her mouth opened in surprise. "How did you-?"

"I dated Queen _C _in high school," I told her with a smile. "I know royalty when I see it."

"She obviously trained you well."

I shook my head, as we reached the front of the line. "Don't I know it."

**==0==**

The bouncers caught sight of us, and once again held the door open. "You were right, Herr Harris, these young frauleins are indeed as beautiful as you said."

"I'm sure they appreciate the compliment, sir," I tipped him forty euros as Heather and I headed through the door, with the sheep giggling behind us.

Die Antwort was what a typical urban nightclub looked like, at least as far as I could tell. Buffy and Faith had dragged me to more than a few in Cleveland, before I'd headed off to Africa. If it weren't for all the people speaking German, I probably wouldn't have been able to tell the difference this one and the ones in the States.

I could see the second floor right away; it was above the dance area and stage. The only way up was via a spiral staircase, with another burly guard standing in front of it.

After escorting the girls to one of the few empty booths in the place, it was time for us to part company, and I felt strangely sad about it. Heather was the last to sit down, and she tried to pull me in with her.

"Sorry, ladies, but I can't stay; I have a previous engagement to get to." I tried to sound as rueful as possible.

Instead of letting me go, Heather pulled me down to her, giving me a deep kiss. Maybe it was just her way of thanking me for services rendered, or maybe she was honestly wasn't repulsed by the eye-patch.

"I'll be in Room 237 at the hostel till Wednesday, Mister Pirate; don't be afraid to knock on my door."

Guess it was option number two after all. Giving her a smile, I pulled back. "I'll keep that in mind, Queen H, you and your friends have a nice night."

But as I headed toward the spiral staircase, I knew I'd never take her up on the offer. She was just too young, and on top of that, she reminded me of Cordelia way too much...

When I approached, I wasn't surprised how the bouncer immediately undid the hook on the small velvet rope blocking the stairs. He gestured, "Your friend is waiting for you at one of the tables to your left, Herr Harris."

With a silent nod to him I walked up the stairs, hoping I'd finally get some freaking answers.

**==0==**

The mystery woman wasn't hard to find; she was sitting at a table on the left and staring right at me as I crested the stairs. She was dressed in an all-black outfit, with platinum-blond hair. Sort of like Spike, only she didn't make me sick to my stomach when I looked at her.

As I sat down at the table across from her, she smiled. It was one of those '_I know something you don't_' smiles. I always hated those.

"Hello, Alexander, I'm glad you could finally join me."

I snorted. "It would have helped if you'd told me '_the answer_' was in German. What if I'd ridden the damn bus right past this place? Because I almost did, you know."

"But you didn't, and look on the bright side; you met some new friends." She nodded to the floor below. "The blond seemed quite enamored with you, didn't she?"

"Let's cut the bullshit, lady. Who are you, and what were you doing in Africa three weeks ago?"

"My name is Break." She took her time with a long sip of her drink. "And as for question number two, some friends are interested in what you've been able to do with your slayers. I thought the best way to introduce myself, would be to help you out."

"So you set up that attack to make yourself look good? Big mistake." I stood up, ready to let this woman know exactly what I thought of her plan. I'd never felt the inclination to hit a woman outside of a sparring match, but I was ready to now.

That's when I heard the sound of a slide being racked beneath the table. Shit. My 1911 was being kept 'safe' back in England.

"Sit down before you make a scene," she said calmly.

"Or what, you'll shoot me?" I asked, leaning across the table toward her.

"I showed up in Africa to save your macho ass, you fool," she insisted, meeting me in the middle of the table. "You're no use to those friends I mentioned if you're dead."

"I don't need any new friends," I spat, already sick of whatever game she was trying to play.

Break gave me a dark look. "I never said they-"

"You give me that cliched line, and I'll walk out of this club right now."

With a sigh, Miss 'Break' sat back; somehow though, I knew that pistol was still pointed at me under the table. "Those 'people' at the airport were specifically after you. There are those who don't like the fact that you're arming slayers with modern weapons."

That made some sense, but not enough. "So why all the cloak and dagger crap? Tell me where to find them."

"That's why I contacted you, but we can't do it-" Whatever she was about to say was caught off by a look of shock on her face. "Davis."

"Miss Winston. Mister Harris," a man's voice said from behind me. "How nice to meet you both."

I looked over my shoulder to find a man in a dark green suit, and sunglasses standing there. Whoever he was, Break didn't like him.

"Get down!" she screamed at me, as she drew the gun out from under the table.

Instead of dropping under the table where I'd be helpless, I threw myself to the side toward the balcony railing. As soon as I was clear, she started shooting. I turned toward the man, and saw him actually dodging the bullets.

Crap. And here I was kinda hoping for a demon-free evening tonight.

The crowd started screaming all around us, as Break stopped to reload. At almost the same time, the man pulled out a Desert Eagle. I lifted a chair over my head and tried to hit him, but he just raised his left arm to block it. I watched in shock as the metal legs bent around Davis' arm like a couple of wet noodles or something.

Magic? Terrific. Of course, my evening wouldn't be complete without that.

After grabbing and tossing the chair aside, this 'Davis' guy pointed the gun at me, but then something threw me sideways onto the next table over. I slid across the top, and crashed to the floor on the other side.

"Get the hell outta here, Harris!"

More gunshots rang out, and then I saw Break charge Davis and start fighting with him. The table we'd been at was flipped over, and I was guessing that was what had sent me flying when she flipped it over. Was she a slayer?

As I climbed back to my feet for round two, I saw someone running toward me from the stairs. It was that translator friend of Heather's, Sarah something, and she was carrying a goddamn mini-Uzi.

What the hell was going on here?

**==0==**

I didn't know whose side she was on, but I already knew Davis was bad news. Break was putting up a decent fight, and they were both using moves I'd never even seen a slayer do. The problem was, she was on the receiving end of most of them.

At that moment, Sarah the translator took aim with the mini-Uzi. Then I was sure just who she was aiming for.

"Break!" I called out, trying to warn her.

Distracted by my yell, Davis caught her with a left hook, and she went flying across the club into a wall. I stared, open-mouthed; that was almost twenty feet. Who was this guy?

As he turned toward me, the redhead opened up, emptying the entire clip into Davis' back and side. How had she kept it steady like that one-handed? Was she a slayer too?

He fell to the ground, and his body went all silvery for a few seconds before changing into something...someone else. Suddenly, he had long blond hair, a red top and black skirt...which was exactly what Queen H had been wearing.

Oh, crap. I knew there was a reason I hated magic!

I ran over to her body and turned it over; she stared up at the ceiling with dead eyes, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth.

"Damn it," I heard the redhead mutter.

That was it; I saw Davis' pistol lying on the floor. I grabbed it and pointed it at Queen H's killer, I'd had enough of this bullshit. "Start talking. What the fuck just happened?"

At the same time, she raised the mini-Uzi up to point it at me. "It's too late for that, Harris; besides, once he took her over, she was already dead."

More than likely true, damn it, but still. "That's not good enough!"

"We need to get out of here before he comes back."

Yeah, right. But then again, in my line of work - not a possibility to be discounted yet, either. Again, what the hell had I gotten myself into? "I want an-"

Something hit me in the back of the head, and the last thing I saw was the floor rushing to meet my face.

**==0==**

I woke up, laid out in the back seat of a car, with my head facing the passenger seat. I could hear the driver, Break, talking to someone on the phone. I pretended to be asleep, as I tried to figure out what to do.

"...up and running, we can't just drive around all night."

"We don't know when Davis is going to show up with some friends. You should have had this ready before we made contact."

With the driver distracted, I figured now was the time to make a move. I could grab hold of the passenger, and finally get some answers my way. I inched my way forward, when suddenly I had the barrel of a gun shoved in my face.

"Don't even think it, asshole."

Looking up that arm, I saw it was the redhead. Queen H's killer. I glared up at her, sick of having a gun pointed at me. Sure, it had happened plenty of times in Africa, but never all at once like tonight.

"Yeah, he just woke up and tried to make a move. Slide's ready to put a bullet in him just for being such a pain in the ass." That was Break talking into the phone.

"When my backup shows up, you two are completely screwed," I bluffed, it wasn't like I had anything else to go with.

'Slide' snorted. "Yeah, that's why the nearest slayer team is in Munich, right? We've been tracking you ever since you crossed the Channel and hit the mainland Europe. So spare us the bullshit."

I got a sick feeling in my gut, hearing that. It wasn't so much that I'd been captured, but more that they knew about the Council, and where its slayer teams were located. We obviously had a serious security breach somewhere.

Break stopped for a light, and I made my move. I grabbed the door handle and yanked, but before I could throw myself out of the car, something whacked me hard on the back of the head.

On the bright side, the vinyl seat was a lot softer to land on than a sticky concrete floor.

**==0==**

I woke up again when I fell on something, hard.

"Was that really necessary?" a male voice asked.

Opening my eyes, I saw several pairs of feet standing in front of me. So instead of two psycho maybe-slayers, I was dealing with multiple opponents now. Terrific.

"The asshole pointed a gun at me, and then tried to jump out of the car," Slide replied. "What did you expect me to do, lay him down on a bed of roses?"

"Give him some room," the man ordered, before kneeling down in front of me. "Alexander, it's a pleasure to finally meet you."

The guy was black, stocky, probably in his early forties. He was also dressed in an all-black outfit; I was starting to see a theme here. "It's Xander, and who the fuck are you?"

He gave me a gap-toothed smile and held out his hand to help me up off the floor. "My name is Morpheus."

Hell, what did I have to lose? I took his hand and he pulled me up with ease, it was a lot better than lying on the floor. I looked around and saw the two women from earlier, along with a huge white guy - the man had to be almost seven feet tall. We were also surrounded with some kind of computer equipment, in what looked like a beat-up old apartment.

That wasn't what caught my eye, though. It was the fact that these people were all armed to the teeth; the big man was holding a PKM machine gun one-handed like it was nothing. After three years in Africa, I knew Russian-made weapons real well; besides, they were everywhere nowadays.

With a drum clip and bi-pod, this guy wasn't on guard duty. These people were either expecting something bad to happen, or were about to do something bad. I had to wonder if I'd been kidnapped by some kind of terrorist group.

They seemed to be everywhere these days; that one in Japan, the Wild Seven, they were making headlines almost every day. Were they trying to use me to get slayers? I decided to cut the crap and find out.

"If you're after slayers, or should I say _more_ slayers, you may as well kill me right now. I won't tell you anything willingly, and I have an amazingly high pain threshold if you're planning to use torture."

"What makes you think we wanted anyone but you, Xander?" Morpheus asked.

"You've already got two slayers," I nodded toward Slide and Break. "Why stop there?"

Slide muttered something under her breath, before catching an elbow in the ribs from Break.

"And what if I told you that there's no such thing as a slayer, or vampires?" the black man asked, smiling slightly.

"After everything I've seen and done over the last eight years, I'd say you're full of shit." I glanced around the room, trying to find the nearest exit or maybe even a weapon I could use. "So why don't we move on?"

"Why don't you cut the fucking attitude?" Slide demanded, bringing her weapon up.

"You're real tough when you've got a gun pointed at a man's head, or your buddies are backing you up," I told her with a glare. "Makes me wonder how well you'd cope alone, or with the old Council's Cruciamentum drug."

"Enough," Morpheus ordered, as he held out an arm to stop Slide from coming at me. "Dirge..."

"Yes?" the big man spoke for the first time, with a heavy Russian accent.

"Go tell Cross to come up here, then start your watch of the perimeter. Take Slide with you before she shoots our...guest."

With a nod, he headed toward a door to my far right. "Come, little butterfly!" he called out to the much-shorter woman.

The redhead glared up at the man, slapping him on shoulder. "You know I hate that nickname!" she complained, as she followed him out the door.

**==0==**

I looked on as the two of them left; it had cut my chances of escape by half. While I had a decent chance getting around the Russian, there was no way I could do it while dodging a slayer too.

"Please, don't take Slide's attitude personally. Well, not too much anyway," Morpheus explained. "At one time, her sister was a 'slayer'; so she doesn't like anyone that's attached to your Council."

"I could honestly care less, mister. Now I want to know what the fuck's going on, and don't try to feed me that shit about slayers and vamps not existing either!"

"It's unfortunate that things turned out the way they did, earlier this evening," the black man said with a sigh. "Slide was at the bar getting a round of drinks when the Agent took over Miss Owens' body. There was truly nothing she could have done to save that poor girl."

"You were responsible for what happened to her, by having a spy in her group!" I moved forward, but saw Break push her coat aside, revealing her pistol. I glared at her, and she simply shook her head.

Morpheus just stood there passively, seemingly ignoring what was going on between the two of us. When I finally returned my attention back to him, he continued. "We had in mind an offer for you, but due to the involvement of Agent Davis, things became...complicated."

"Obviously," I snarled. "That guy was out to kill Miss Break here, of course he'd use someone I might care about to twist the knife a little deeper. That's just the way the old Harris luck runs."

"Why don't we discuss this further somewhere else?" 'Morpheus' told me, motioning to the door on my left. "I'm asking you to hear me out before you make any final decisions or judgments concerning me and mine, Xander. There is much I have to tell you. What do you say?"

He and Break both stood there, waiting for an answer. The door to the left was my only viable exit at this point, but I wasn't sure why they wanted me to go in there. Finally, though, I had a plan. "Fine, but she stays out here."

Morpheus smiled at me again, before moving to the door, and holding it open for me.

"After you."

Morpheus walked through without a word. As I followed in after him, I kept an eye on Break to make sure she wasn't following, before closing the door behind us.

**==0==**

After entering the room, I expected more people to pop up, or a threat of some kind. Instead, there was nothing but a couple of chairs with an end table in between the two. On it was a glass of water. Otherwise, the room was completely empty.

There were no other doors, and the only way out besides the one I'd used to come in, was through a window. I somehow doubted we were anywhere close to a ground floor, though. Damn.

Morpheus walked over, and sat down in the chair on the left, and motioned to the other. "Please, have a seat."

I shook my head. "Other one," I told him firmly.

He simply nodded, and moved to the other seat. Probably trying to be nice after everything his two female operatives had put me through. I just sat down in the other chair; there was no way I was putting my back to that door. "So hit me with this pitch of yours, already."

"First of all, Xander, I have a question for you. Have you ever heard of the Matrix?"

"No," I replied honestly. "What is it, a nightclub of some sort?"

"No. The thing is, I cannot tell you exactly what the Matrix is. It is something you have to learn, to experience for yourself." Morpheus clicked the container twice, before setting it down on the table next to the glass.

Morpheus held out his left hand, revealing a blue pill. "You have two options, my young friend. You swallow the blue pill, and you will wake up in your bed at the hostel with no memory of this conversation. Everything concerning Break and Slide and Miss Owens and Agent Davis will be wiped away from your mind."

"You take the red pill," he went on, revealing it in his right hand. "And I will show you everything you need to know about this enemy that targeted you in Africa. My group and I will help you in any way possible to fight them."

He held out his hands, as I glanced back and forth between the two pills. Damn it, I hadn't been expecting this.

Could I trust this man? Would I be better off fighting this new threat on my own? If I took neither option and just left - assuming that I could actually do that, of course - would anyone within the Council even believe me after what had happened in Africa?

Probably not.

Ah, hell. I knew it was stupid and probably suicidal, and if my girls were here they'd probably kick my ass for doing this; Willow, Buffy, Faith, probably even Dawn. She's nearly eighteen now, after all. But the way I saw it, their opinions didn't matter because I was here and they weren't; and since when did doing stupid and suicidal things ever stop me before?

Finally making my decision, I reached for the red pill. As I did, Morpheus spoke once more.

"Know that once you swallow that pill, Xander - you can never go back. Your life will never be the same."

I nodded, and took the red pill from his hand. As I stuck it in my mouth, I knew I was making the right decision. The new Council had no idea what they were facing; and if I had to never see them again in order to keep my friends safe, it was still worth it.

**==0==**

Holy freaking hell, but I felt sore all over.

Turns out the red pill was a tracker of some kind, and Morpheus and his people used it to find me. And when I say 'find me', I mean that in the literal sense. Because everything I thought was real...it wasn't.

Imagine waking up and finding yourself in an artificial womb. Gasping, your lungs burning as you try to cough and splutter out whatever vile liquid was in your body as the pod was smashed by your lurching up. Imagine, too, ripping out some sort of damn tubes and cables that were implanted into your back and sides, connecting you to a vast mechanical tower covered with identical pods - before Morpheus and his people show up to grab you out of that artificial womb, some sort of weird machinery flying around the whole time.

Even to someone with memories of growing up in a town like Sunnydale, that sort of thing was just too weird to believe.

I was sitting at a table aboard some sort of ship, wrapped in a blanket. I was still shivering, unable to believe what had happened to me. My body was like totally atrophied, muscles practically non-existent; but one thing I wasn't expecting to exist, now did. My left eye.

Hello, binocular vision, how I've missed you!

I looked up at Morpheus and said, "Wanna explain?"

"What do you remember?" the black man said, sitting down opposite me.

"The last thing I remember thinking was that I was fool not to take the blue pill, when I woke up in - whatever that thing was," I managed to say, pulling the blanket in tighter.

"We all do," Break said, as she entered the room. I stared at her with new eyes; she didn't seem quite the same person I'd met at Die Antwort and later on at that beat-up apartment. The hair was different, less platinum-blond somehow. "Hello, Harris. Good to finally meet you face to face."

"Huh?"

They launched into their explanation, one that initially - I flat-out refused to believe. Morpheus and Break told me of the Machine civilization, how despite whatever I believed - the year was closer to 2199 than 2007. They told me that humanity is fighting a war against intelligent machines which were created in the early 21st century.

I immediately thought of that cyber-demon thing calling itself ADAM a few years back, of course, but that wasn't it. Apparently, it was more of a Skynet sort of deal, only without the global thermonuclear war scenario.

Way I heard it, when we realized what we'd done two hundred odd years ago, the sky had been covered by some thick black clouds created by us humans in an attempt to cut off the Machines' supply of solar power. The Machines had responded by using human beings as their energy source in conjunction with nuclear fusion, later growing countless people in pods and harvesting our bioelectrical energy and body heat to power themselves.

Like I said; un-freaking-believable.

Morpheus and Break told me that the world in which I grew up was actually the Matrix, a simulated reality of the world just before the Machines took over; something developed by them in order to keep the human captives docile and compliant in their roles as Duracell batteries. Morpheus and his crew apparently belonged to a group of free humans who "unplugged" others from the Matrix, and recruited them to their resistance against the Machines.

They told me how they were able to use their understanding of the Matrix's nature to bend the simulation's laws of physics, giving them superhuman abilities within the virtual world; which explained the sort of moves I saw in that German nightclub by Break, and why that Agent Davis guy had appeared to be using magic.

They told me how everything I'd known and believed in - it was all a lie.

It took a while for it all to sink in and for them to convince me I wasn't completely crazy, I will admit. But after they had restored my atrophied body and I had met the other members of the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar, all of whom had been unplugged from the network like myself and had the exact same empty holes where the tubes and cables had been, well - God help me, but I actually started to believe their story.

"Why?" I finally croaked out, still not sure if this was all happening in my mind and I was actually gibbering inside a padded cell somewhere.

"Why what?" Morpheus asked, as Break left the room.

"Why me? And what's the real deal with that Davis guy I ran into, at that nightclub?" I asked, reminded of how that girl Heather - Queen H - had died. Or had that even really happened? Right now, I wasn't sure of anything.

"Let me explain about the Agents," Morpheus nodded. He went on to do so, telling me details of the artificial intelligence constructs that existed within the virtual world. Powerful, sentient computer programs with the ability to possess the virtual body of anyone directly connected to the Matrix, and whose sole purpose was to seek out and eliminate any threats to the simulation. "There's a reason you attracted their attention, I'm afraid."

"Me, what did I do?"

Morpheus sighed. "Bear with me, as this might take a while..."

I listened, as the black man tried to dumb it down enough for me to understand. Putting it as non-technically as possible, while demons and magic are just part of the mass delusion the vamps are like a computer virus; the Matrix can generate triple the energy from their bodies, but they'd overload the system if there were too many of them. So the slayer was like an anti-virus software tool, keeping the overload from happening.

Ah, but here's where it gets tricky: what Willow did last year, the mass calling of the chosen crowd? Without meaning to, she actually adjusted the virtual reality network via a back door the Machines hadn't been expecting any human to ever be able to use. The Matrix had been forever changed, and it was impossible for the Machines to put it back the way it was without killing their life-support system, i.e. the humans they had enslaved, and who subconsciously thought they were living in the 21st century.

And here's the rub: with the explosion of so many slayers, the anti-virus software was now working a little too well. The Matrix was losing serious amounts of power due to all the vamps getting dusted. And when I'd started militarizing the slayers, with weapons and tactics, apparently I became almost as big a threat to the Machines as the freed humans - in terms of disrupting their power supply, anyway.

"I don't freaking believe this," I said, shaking my head after I finally put on some clothes. "If all that's true, why didn't the Machines just unplug me and flush me down the toilet? Instead of the whole cloak and dagger thing in Germany, and the vampire attack in Africa?"

"No doubt that, eventually, they would have killed you that way if they had no other choice. But you're - strange," Morpheus said carefully, as my head snapped up to look him right in the eye. "According to our sources something went wrong with you when you were bred in that pod, apparently. For a while, we even suspected that you were the One - until the Oracle told us otherwise."

"The One? The Oracle?" I had no idea what he was talking about.

"We'll get to that later. But to answer your original question, personally, I suspect the Machines didn't want to take the risk of the Matrix completely crashing by unplugging you unnecessarily."

"And luckily for me, you and your people found me and unplugged me first," I mused, staring at my so-called savior. "So, that thing about the anti-virus...are you seriously telling me that slayers aren't real?"

"In a sense, they are. But they are not people, in the way you and I are," Morpheus shrugged. "I know that given the life you've experienced so far, that will be somewhat upsetting for you to contemplate..."

Somewhat upsetting? Was he freaking shitting me? This guy just told me that Buffy and Faith and all the rest of the slayers weren't real! Then I asked about Dawn - and she's not frickin' real, either?

I couldn't accept that. I just couldn't. My girls were simply too much a part of my life for me to ever admit that they didn't exist. Okay, Willow was real, Morpheus wasn't denying that; Tara had been real too. Ditto Joyce and Ms. Calendar...

But Sabi, Anne, Natama, Ouattara and all the other potentials who had become slayers apparently weren't real. Kennedy, Rona, Vi and the other Sunnydale girls who I'd sacrificed my eye for...they didn't actually exist outside the Matrix. Kendra hadn't been real either. Even Drusilla wasn't real...even though in her case, that was more like cause for celebration than anything else!

I suddenly wondered, what about Cordelia? Had she been real? I'd heard she'd become part-demon before that whole Jasmine cluster-fuck; did that mean my high school girlfriend was just a figment of some machine's imagination?

Suddenly, I realised that Morpheus still hadn't answered the first question I'd asked. "Why me? Why disconnect me and not someone else, like - like Giles? Or even Willow?"

"Because _someone_, _obviously misinformed_, told them you'd be of a lot more use in helping to free people from the Matrix, and one day destroying all the Machines."

**==0==**

I turned around, and I couldn't believe my eyes. "Cordelia?"

Cordy stood there in the doorway, just as beautiful as I remembered her. "Guess I can't deny it, dork; it really is me," she said with a smile.

I walked over to her and gripped her in a huge bear hug, lifting her up off of the ground. If this was a dream, I didn't want to wake up; and if I was insane and this was all just an elaborate fantasy playing out in my mind, well, hell - the old saying's true, you really can find true happiness within a delusion.

"I'm real happy to see you, too, now let me go - you fashion-dead oaf!" she yelled with a laugh.

Releasing her, I just stared - unbelieving that I'd found her here, of all places. "I thought you were dead. How did they bring you back?"

"I never died, Xander; the body that was buried within the Matrix was just a digital recreation made by the Machines. I was too high profile, with Angel running Evil Inc. and all, to just have it disappear again."

"Why didn't she tell me you were here, when we first met in the Matrix?" I asked, pointing toward Break - who had entered the room along with Cordy.

Cordy's smile lessened, and she suddenly looked very tired. "It's a hard decision to make. I wanted you to make it on your own, without me influencing the outcome."

"I could have-" I stopped when she shushed me, putting her finger to my mouth.

"I know you, Harris. If my name had been mentioned you would have swallowed that red pill in a heartbeat, if for no other reason than to try and find me."

Yeah, true enough. Then I had a thought. "What about Anya? Is she-?"

"She's not here, Xander. I'm sorry. We think that after she died in the Matrix, her remains were disposed of by the Machines - just like with any other used-up human body," Morpheus said compassionately. Then he gestured to Break, and they left the room; leaving me and Cordy alone there.

I felt sick. Ahn had been dead for quite a while now, sure - but it was like I'd just lost her all over again. And the truth was, I felt horrible for what had been done to her - making her believe that she'd been around for 1120 years as a demon, whereas in reality - she musta been even younger than I was...

I don't know how long I sat there, but eventually I felt Cordelia's warm hands slip into mine. I looked up as she said, "I'm sorry, Xander. I know she meant a lot to you. Just like Angel...meant a lot to me. I swear, you have no idea what it's like to wake up and suddenly learn that you have feelings for a...a computer virus!"

I sucked in a deep breath, recalling that part of Morpheus' explanation. "How long...?"

"Have I been alive in the land of the awake? Ever since my 'death'. Over six months," she said, showing me where the holes where the tubes and cables had been plugged into her body; which were just like mine. Even the socket in her skull, formerly used by the Machines to connect her to the Matrix, which allowed knowledge to be uploaded directly into her mind; which actually explained all the fancy martial arts moves Cordelia said she had picked up almost immediately, while working for Angel Investigations.

Cordy then looked furious, "It took me a long time to get over the lies and deception, Xander. But once I came to terms with it, after Morpheus and Trinity rescued me-"

"Trinity?" I interrupted.

"My new best friend. I think you'll like her, when you two meet soon," my ex flashed me her patented megawatt Queen C smile, but only for a moment. "Anyway, I started hounding the people aboard this ship to rescue the rest of my LA family. There was nothing I could do for Angel - he doesn't really exist. But I could help Wesley, Fred and Gunn; and eventually, I did," Cordy finished up.

Oh. Yeah, that explained why just about everyone in Angel's Fang Gang had passed on one way or another, by this point. Apart from Angel and Spike themselves, of course.

"And me?" I asked, getting my thoughts back in order.

"And you," Cordy acknowledged, even though I found it hard to believe she'd encouraged Morpheus to rescue me.

"Why? I mean, what with the way things ended between us-"

Again she put her finger on my lips to shut me up. "Do you have any idea just how many guys I thought I had feelings for, were just figments of some machine's imagination?" Cordy demanded. "Doyle. Groo. Angel. Even Wilson Christopher, the first guy I slept with in LA, was a freaking undercover Agent in disguise!

You're the only one of the lot of them who was actually real, dorkhead. I...I guess I wanted at least one piece of proof that my life in the Matrix wasn't some psycho machine's idea of a sick joke," she ranted. "Especially with that whole 'Jasmine' nightmare!"

"I see."

"I've been watching you in between rescuing Wes, Fred and Gunn, y'know," Cordy then gave me a funny look.

"Really?"

"Yeah, really. And you've changed since high school; you're not that idiotic clown who cheated on me anymore. Plus, there's the fact that I haven't gotten any in the past six months, and it's been driving me nuts."

"Right, I - what?" I honestly wasn't sure whether I had just misheard Cordy, after she'd said that.

But she just smiled at me, grabbed me by the hand and dragged me along to her personal quarters aboard the ship, before slamming the door shut behind us.

**==0==**

I'll say this much for Cordelia Chase; she certainly knows how to make a man she's holding in her arms...happy.

I woke up the next day with her lying next to me, sore in places that had nothing to do with muscle atrophy. The memories came rushing back; the hours spent re-memorizing old tactile lessons and learning a few new ones, plus the languid in-between moments where we talked and figured out just where it is we now stand. The hugs, the kisses, the...everything we never got around to doing back in high school. What we thought was high school, anyway.

It had been quite the learning process; or rather, re-learning process, for both of us.

"G'morning," I said, as I saw her eyes flutter open.

"This isn't a dream, right dweeb?" Cordelia asked, looking at me before starting to smile.

"Nope," I replied, pulling her into a sleepy embrace. "One hundred percent Xander Harris lying right here, accept no substitutes."

"Well, thank God! There was a time I didn't think this would ever be reality..."

"Get used to it, sweetheart," I said to the naked brunette beauty next to me, trying not to smirk. For the first time, I was actually happy not to be trapped and ignorant in the Matrix anymore.

"I already am."

"So am I," I whispered, as Cordy snuggled against my chest. "So. Am. I. Say, where do we go to get breakfast around here?"

"The mess hall, but that can wait for later. Come on, dork; this time I'm gonna whip your ass, and make you beg for more," Cordy snarked, as she suddenly pushed me down and started to devour my lips with her own.

Holy shit. I suddenly got the feeling things around here were going to become very interesting, very soon now.

**==0==**

**Disclaimer 2: The Matrix is owned by Andy and Larry Wachowski, Village Roadshow Pictures, and Silver Pictures.**

**==0==**

**A/N 2: Big thanks to my beta, Theo. If it weren't for his help with the Morpheus parts, this might have sat around for another year...**

**==0==**

**THE END**


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